


Replica

by TwinEnigma



Series: What Makes You [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Biological Weapons, Brainwashing, Clones, Conspiracy, GFY, Gen, Human Experimentation, Identity Issues, Medical Experimentation, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Science Experiments, Unethical Experimentation, Unethical Medicine, cloning, everything's better with clones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-09
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 04:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1456135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinEnigma/pseuds/TwinEnigma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The platoon sent to retrieve Sasuke seems to have succeeded, in a manner of speaking, but all is not right. Solving this mystery may prove troublesome for the Rookie Nine. Who is behind this? Madara, Danzo or forces more sinister?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Juugo winced as he looked at the wound in his side. It wasn’t healing. Blood was soaking through the bandages at a steady, alarming pace. He hissed, ripping off another portion of his shirt and pressing it against the wound. It would, hopefully, slow the bleeding a little more and buy him some time until Suigetsu’s return.

He cast a worried glance at the two forms huddled nearby under his cloak.

Damn it, where was Suigetsu?

A noise startled him and he stood, instantly regretting it. He wobbled unsteadily and cursed. He’d lost a lot more blood that he’d thought.

_“Sasuke’s scent is coming from this way.”_

_“He must have recently – hold up!”_

_“That guy – I recognize him! It’s one of Sasuke’s team members!”_

They knew who Sasuke was, Juugo realized through the dizziness. He took a step forward and tried to focus on their headbands, but he was having trouble.

_“Oh shit, he’s spotted us!”_

_“Wait a minute. There’s something wrong with him.”_

“Are you... Konoha?” he asked, taking another shaky step towards them. The world slid jarringly and he fell, the shirt in his hand falling.

Dimly, he saw a flash of green and pink above him and he saw a swirl in the metal. “You have to... help them.”

_“Shit! He’s bleeding out! Everyone back off! Give me room! Ino, clamp!”_

He felt something cool and green on his side, but the world was dimming. “You... have to... help... Sasuke and... Karin..."


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With one problem fixed, the Sasuke Retrieval team discovers that this may just be one piece in a much larger puzzle.

Sakura sighed, standing up, and wiped off her hands as she walked back to the rest of the team. “We got him stabilized for now, but he’s going to need surgery, soon. There’s more internal damage than either of us can fix on the field.”

“Injuries like that don’t come from nowhere,” Kakashi murmured, eye narrowed thoughtfully. “And if he’s any indication...”

Naruto frowned and Shikamaru snorted in displeasure, his strategies already shifting.

Pakkun sniffed at the large bundled cloak on the ground. “Oi, Kakashi. Sasuke’s scent is coming from here.”

Sai was closest, the other members of the new Sasuke retrieval platoon having spread out to form a perimeter. He leaned down and tore off the cloak.

Beneath it, in bloodstained white clothes, were the barefooted, unconscious forms of Sasuke and his redheaded female companion.

Sakura started forward immediately, kneeling down next to them and taking their pulses. She looked back to Kakashi and signaled ‘asleep.’

He made a gesture and both Naruto and Sai backed off a little. Behind them, the rest of the platoon listened, waiting for further orders.

Sakura leaned forward and gently shook Sasuke’s shoulder. “Sasuke, can you hear me? You have to wake up now, Sasuke.”

He frowned a little and pulled his arm away from her, but didn’t wake up.

Naruto stared in shock and Shikamaru’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Sasuke,” Sakura said, a little louder, “It’s time to wake up.”

Sasuke frowned again and this time he opened his eyes a little. Instantly, he sat up, looking at them in genuine surprise and confusion. It was as if he didn’t recognize them at all.

Next to him, the red-haired girl stirred and, upon seeing them, scooted very close to Sasuke, until she was practically hiding behind him.

“Hey, Sasuke,” Sakura said, calmly, as if she weren’t talking to her dangerously unstable former teammate, but rather a small, lost child.

He stared at her, blinking slowly, and then looked around. “Where’s Juugo?”

So that was the big man’s name.

“Ah, Juugo’s hurt very badly, Sasuke,” Sakura explained. “We’re taking care of him, though. See, he’s right over there.”

She pointed over to the spot where Ino was monitoring the big man’s vitals, Hinata and Kiba standing careful guard.

“Oh,” he said, instantly looking less tense.

“Sasuke, I’m going to check you both for injuries, is that all right?” Sakura asked gently.

He cocked his head to the side. “Like an examination?”

“Yes, just like that,” she said, keeping a pleasant tone.

“Okay,” he said.

Sakura quickly checked his torso and abdomen for wounds and then moved up to his head, searching for evidence of severe head trauma. She repeated the procedure on the girl, who clung tightly to Sasuke’s hand the whole time, but was otherwise just as docile.

“There, all done!” she said cheerfully.

Kakashi cleared his throat.

“Sasuke, can you and... Karin... wait right here for a minute? I’ll be right back,” Sakura said, recalling the name the big man – Juugo – had whispered as he was passing out.

Sasuke nodded complacently.

Sakura smiled pleasantly and walked over to where Kakashi, Naruto and Shikamaru were waiting for her.

* * *

“That’s not Sasuke,” Sakura said bluntly, her face deadly serious.

Naruto stared at her in disbelief but a signal from Kakashi stopped him from protesting.

“What’s his status?” Kakashi asked.

“He’s in perfect physical health,” Sakura said. “No injuries, no illness and no scarring.”

“None at all?” asked Shikamaru, frowning.

Sakura shook her head. “Absolutely no scars anywhere, not even calluses on the hands. And it’s not just him – the girl, too. Nothing.”

“I don’t get it,” Naruto said. “What the hell does that have to do with him not being Sasuke? He looks like him, doesn’t he? And Pakkun says he smells like him, too.”

Sakura sighed and held up her hand, so that Naruto could clearly see the knotwork of fine scars on her knuckles and calluses on her fingers. “Every ninja collects scars over the course of their career from fights and training with their tools and jutsu. Additionally, they form calluses from routine training.”

She paused for a second and then continued, “Sasuke had burn scars on his left fingers from the fire jutsu he favored and electrical burn scars from the Chidori, in addition to the scars left from Haku’s senbon and regular training with shuriken and kunai. He had the curse seal on the left side, at the junction between his shoulder and neck, and likely also had the snake summon contract tattooed on his left arm. We know that he had some additional scarring on his chest when we ran into him at the summit.”

“And that boy has no scars at all,” Shikamaru said thoughtfully.

Sakura nodded.

“So, could there be some kind of weird jutsu that gets rid of them or something?” Naruto asked, frowning.

“Normally, that’s the possibility I’d lean towards,” Sakura sighed. “But not in this case. See, there’s a whole bunch of other weird things going on with those two.”

“Like how he didn’t attempt to attack when you woke him up,” Kakashi said, eyebrow furrowed in thought. “And the way he still trusted you even though he didn’t recognize you. That sort of implicit trust is something you only see in very, very young children.”

“Right,” Sakura said. “He has no head injuries or brain damage to suggest that this is amnesia from severe head trauma. Adding to that, they’re both wearing hospital scrubs and have a serial number tattooed at the wrist.”

Naruto scratched his head, looking over at the two complacent, strangely docile teenagers being watched by Sai. “So, what do you think it means?”

“I think it means we need to find out where Juugo found those two,” Shikamaru said seriously.

“We can’t ask Juugo,” Sakura said, firmly. “He’s in no condition. And we’re going to need to transport him soon if we want him to survive.”

“We can have Naruto reverse summon him to Shizune,” Kakashi supplied. “And I suspect those two will want to go with him. We’ll have to send someone back with them with our findings and to avoid... misunderstandings.”

Naruto looked thoughtful. “Ino and Sai are the best choices for that. Both are good with that kind of thing.”

Shikamaru scoffed a little, but didn’t disagree.

Kakashi nodded. “Ino and Sai will go with them, then. Sakura, why don’t you see if those two can remember anything about where they were?”

Sakura nodded.

“Sakura,” Shikamaru piped up. “Have Sasuke channel some chakra to his eyes, will you?”

She looked a little confused, but nodded.

* * *

“Hey, there, Sasuke,” Sakura said, smiling. “How are you doing?”

Sasuke stared up at her. “Is something wrong?”

“Well, we’re having a little trouble treating Juugo,” she said. “We need to know how he got hurt so we can fix him correctly when we take him to the hospital.”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. The more they knew about how he’d been wounded, the easier treatment was going to be.

Sasuke’s face fell. “He got hurt when he took us out of that place. He rescued us.”

“What place?” Sakura asked.

Karin shook her head, pointing wildly to her left, and clung tightly to Sasuke, who answered her, “I don’t know. We didn’t see a lot of it. There were a lot of dead people, though.”

“Do you think you could show us how to get back there?” Sai asked, kneeling down and unrolling a blank scroll.

Sasuke shook his head. “I don’t remember. It was all so fast.”

Karin shook her head and clung to him harder.

“Karin doesn’t remember either,” Sasuke added. “She thinks it was that way though.”

He pointed to the same spot Karin had been pointing to.

“Thank you, Karin. I know it’s hard,” Sakura nodded, smiling at the girl.

“Will Juugo be okay now?” Sasuke asked, anxiously.

“Don’t worry, we’re going to send him to one of the best hospitals around,” Sakura said, soothingly.

“We want to go with him,” Sasuke demanded.

“I know, that’s why we’re sending you with him,” Sakura explained calmly. “I just need to do one more test first and then we’ll send all of you to the hospital. I know he’ll be happy to see you both there after he’s better.”

Sasuke immediately seemed pacified.

“Now, Sasuke, do you know what chakra is?” Sakura asked.

He shook his head in the negative.

“Okay,” she sighed, taking a deep breath. How to explain this? “I need you to close your eyes and picture a ball. I want you to slowly pull that ball up until it’s at your head and then open your eyes.”

Sasuke complied, screwing up his face as he attempted to concentrate, and then opened his eyes, revealing two immature, single-tomoe Sharingan eyes.

“Now, close your eyes and let the ball go,” Sakura said, watching as he immediately did so. “Good, very good. You did very well.”

“It was hard,” he pouted, looking at her with once-again dark eyes. “My eyes felt weird.”

“It’s okay. You did very, very well, Sasuke.” Sakura smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way as she offered him a hand. He took it carefully, allowing her to help him to his feet, and then turned to help Karin to her feet as well.

It was utterly surreal.

Sakura mentally kicked herself and asked Sai to come with them. She had some first-responder notes she wanted to send along with the patients and his shorthand was the best.


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the team splits up, more pieces of the puzzle come to light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter does mention violence and dead bodies.

“Not good,” Shizune sighed, taking her mentor’s vitals again.

Tsunade had yet to awaken. The fight to keep everyone alive during Pain’s attack had taken a severe toll on the Fifth. Shizune and Sakura had tried their best to bring her out of it, but the attack had put a heavy strain on them, too, and then Sakura had taken the rest of her peers with her to go running off after Naruto, who’d gone and stupidly run after the ninja going to the Hokage summit.

That boy, she swore, would be the death of her.

There was a familiar heavy burst of chakra and resounding thud as a summon creature’s body mass hit ground outside. Shortly, it was followed by the familiar whine of one Ino Yamanaka in thoroughly grossed out mode. Shizune opened the tent flap and stepped outside, not at all shocked by the giant toad. So, they’d caught up with Naruto after all.

“Be careful!” Ino shrieked, “I thought I told you he’s critical!”

The toad attempted to apologize as it unfurled its long tongue further, but seemed to reconsider it, as it would involve jostling the patient further.

“What’s going on?” Shizune asked.

Ino, flanked by Sai and two youths in heavy, hooded winter cloaks, finally appeared as the tongue completely unfurled. They were standing next to the body of a large man with bright orange hair and a massive patched wound on his side.

“Shizune, we found something you’re going to want to see,” Ino said, grinning widely. “Let’s get inside.”

“Patient status?” Shizune asked, signaling the ANBU outside the tent to assist them in carrying the man inside. They were the four most devoted to Tsunade, those that had guarded her when she faced Pain, and they had allowed no others to replace them.

“Critical,” Ino said, monitoring the man’s vitals again. “Severe trauma to the right abdominal cavity, damage to several internal organs, massive blood loss. Detected presence of a near lethal dose of sedatives in his system, too.”

“Put him down over there,” Shizune said, indicating a free space near the back of the large tent that she’d curtained off for triage surgery. It was close enough to Tsunade that she could still monitor her and perform emergency surgery.

“Is Juugo going to be okay?” asked one of the cloaked youths. The voice was male and, by the tone of voice, Shizune suspected it was a young civilian.

Ino smiled at the cloaked boy sweetly. “Of course, he will. Shizune’s one of the best medics in Fire Country.”

“I thought we were going to a hospital,” the boy said, sulkily, and the other cloaked youth hugged his arm tightly.

“You’re looking at it,” Shizune sighed, flipping through the seals of a diagnostic jutsu and placing her hands on the wound. “Ino, I’m going to need you to give a mental tap to the following surgeons.”

Ino nodded, taking note of the names, and then sat down, making a hand seal as she scattered her mind over the city. “Message sent. They’ll be here soon.”

Shizune took the patient’s vitals again and checked the field dressing. “You and Sakura did really well. I’m proud of you. He must have been an inch from death when you got to him, but he’s stable enough for surgery now.”

Ino beamed under the praise.

The civilian boy shifted uncomfortably. “He’ll be okay now, right?”

Shizune nodded. “He’ll be off his feet for a while, but he’ll live.”

The boy and his companion immediately appeared to relax.

“What’s their story?” Shizune asked.

Sai and Ino looked at each other and then Sai held out a scroll as he said, “You may want to sit down for this, ma’am.”

Shizune gave them a skeptical look, unrolled the scroll and started reading. It was in medical shorthand, Sakura’s, judging by the cipher used, and – that was _impossible._ She immediately jerked her head up, looking at the two of them and then back to the scroll. “Is this right?”

“Sakura checked personally,” Ino said, deadly serious. “You know she wouldn’t screw up something like this.”

“Take off your hoods. I want to have a look at you,” Shizune said, turning to the two youths.

They complied and she fought the urge to gasp, instead discreetly signaling the ANBU that there was no threat. There was no doubt about it – that boy was a dead ringer for one Sasuke Uchiha and the girl clinging to his arm matched descriptions of the girl he’d been traveling with.

Shizune frowned and turned to the ANBU. “Get all ANBU loyal to Tsunade here on the double. No one comes in or out of this tent without my permission, is that clear?”

The four ANBU nodded and exited, their presences immediately vanishing.

“Did we do something wrong?” the boy asked, clearly confused.

“No, no, it’s nothing you did,” Shizune smiled thinly. “Ino, Sai – please keep an eye on them. Things are going to get very serious around here.”

* * *

“This way,” Kiba said as he and Akamaru bounded ahead.

Behind him, the platoon followed in loose formation at a steady pace. Naruto frowned as they passed another dry splotch of red splashed on the trees and shot a glance at Sakura. She looked equally concerned, but thoughtful. None of them really knew what to expect. Chances were it wasn’t going to be good.

Then again, they’d been prepared for the worst from the start.

Kiba stopped, holding up his fist in a halt signal, and then slipped off Akamaru’s back, sinking low into the brush. “Scent trail ends about forty meters ahead at that cave.”

Hinata made a hand seal, the veins around her eyes bulging. “No chakra signatures visible at the cave entrance, but I’m picking up a large amount underground.”

“Confirmed,” Neji said, the veins around his eyes also bulging. “Estimating about a hundred individual stationary chakra signatures and four independently moving ones, moving in sets of two, about eighty meters from the cave entrance and about twenty meters down.”

Kakashi leaned forward, eye narrowed. “What does their relative position look like?”

“Most of them almost like they’re on those funny stacked beds,” Hinata said, giving him an odd look, as Neji nodded in confirmation.

Shikamaru frowned. “I don’t like this.”

“It’s your call,” Kakashi said, shrugging.

Naruto sighed, standing up. “That Juugo guy’s a tough customer. You didn’t see him at the summit. He’s practically a berserker. If he lost control trying to protect those two because he thought they were his teammates, then whoever he left alive he wasn’t able to find or didn’t consider worth killing.”

“They could be injured,” Sakura suggested. “It might be a medical ward.”

An underground medical ward hidden in the middle of the woods... Naruto resisted the urge to shudder. It brought to mind Orochimaru and his creepy psychopath assistant. They liked that sort of thing.

Shikamaru closed his eyes for a moment, frowning, and then opened them, standing up. “Shino, Hinata, Kiba and Tenten - you’re on point. Kakashi, Naruto, Sakura and I will form up the center. Yamato, Rock, Chouji, Neji – do a quick sweep of the perimeter and form up on our flank.”

Kakashi and Yamato exchanged a glance and the latter smiled approvingly, saying “Man, they grow up so fast.”

Neji clapped Hinata on the shoulder as he moved to join up with the others, giving her a nod, and then they disappeared into the trees.

It was all but unsaid: _watch yourselves._

* * *

The _not-_ Sasuke was inherently disturbing, Ino decided.

Sasuke Uchiha was supposed to be death on two feet with a doujutsu that could shred a mind like it was tissue paper in mere seconds. He was a bad-ass, possibly insane genius, and would fight like a cornered wild animal if he was caught. He had never allowed anyone who wasn’t bandaging him up to touch him, much less a girl, – and even then, it was only as long as was absolutely necessary to make sure the bandages stayed put.

Consequently, the fact that not-Sasuke was sitting calmly on the floor in bloody white scrubs with that strange redheaded girl curled up in a ball next to him and talking to Sai was nothing short of mind-boggling.

“So, the lady over on that side is the Fifth Hokage,” not-Sasuke said, pointing at Tsunade’s bed. “She’s supposed to be in charge, but she’s wounded real bad... so, they put someone else in charge?”

“That’s correct,” Sai said, smiling a little.

Ino had to admit one thing – the little bugger had a mind like a steel trap. As soon as the surgeons and Shizune had disappeared behind the curtain to operate, he’d pulled his hood off again and started asking all kinds of questions in an attempt to figure out what was going on.

“And this guy, this Danzo, he’s not a good guy, right?” not-Sasuke asked.

Sai winced a little and Ino answered for him, “He’s a warmonger. If he gets permanently appointed to the position, he’ll likely push us into a war with another one of the shinobi nations. Our village recently suffered a major attack and we’re still rebuilding. We don’t have the resources to go to war for an extended period of time. A lot of people could end up getting killed.”

The not-Sasuke considered this, frowning. “Then why hasn’t anyone gotten rid of him?”

“Well, that’s harder than it seems,” Ino sighed. “We’re hoping a more permanent replacement will appear before they decide to keep him on board.”

The girl uncurled a little, tugging on not-Sasuke’s sleeve.

“Karin says you’re lying,” not-Sasuke said, scowling.

“The leech girl can sense lies?” Sai asked, his eyebrows.

“Leech girl?” not-Sasuke growled.

Ino groaned, rolling her eyes.

“It is common practice to give people falsely-insulting nicknames to foster closeness,” Sai said, cheerfully grinning like an idiot. “In fact, I have been considering calling you ‘stupid’.”

Ino hit him with a medical textbook, knocking him flat off the chair, and grinned sheepishly at the two now-very stunned others. “I am so sorry about that. He has no idea what he’s talking about.”

Sai sat up, still grinning despite the lump on his head. “How about Brat and Dork?”

Ino hit him again, harder this time.

Both not-Sasuke and his shy companion scooted back a little further, watching them with wide eyes.

* * *

The cave, as they shortly discovered, was completely artificial. The camouflaged door appeared to be on a hydraulic gear system, something that few cities and countries had access to, and it had been rammed open from the inside. Once inside, they were greeted by what resembled a slaughterhouse. Some of the remains were unrecognizable as human. Sakura stopped long enough to confirm the bodies were still relatively warm, and they moved deeper inside.

“Keep an eye out for signs of who this place belongs to,” Shikamaru called out, nudging an arm with his foot. “Someone’s obviously funneled a lot of money into this place.”

At the end of the hallway was another metal door. This one looked like it’d been smashed in while in the process of being closed. The impact had folded it back into the frame, jamming it open. More bodies waited on the other side under ominously flickering neon lights. Beyond the hallway was a series of ramps, leading deeper underground. The lights here had died, forcing them to bring out the glow sticks.

“Still no movement from that major group of chakra sources,” Hinata announced.

“Location?” asked Shikamaru.

“Twenty meters down, forty meters ahead,” she stated simply. “The other four are only ten meters off the bottom and seem to be looking for something, judging by the movement.”

They started down the ramps slowly, taking note of more bodies and several overturned cargo carts. Sakura, in particular, frowned when she noticed the medical nature of the contents of several spilled containers. At the bottom, the ramp opened into a large, dark storage room.

Kiba stopped and made a hold position sign with his hand, Akamaru whining and sniffing at the ground in confusion. “We have a problem.”

Kakashi stepped forward, eyes narrowed. “This scent... Sasuke and that girl... their scents are all over the place in here.”

Kiba nodded, frowning. “I’m going to try focusing on that Juugo guy’s scent.”

“Hinata – what’s the status on those chakra signatures?” Shikamaru asked, frowning and holding the glow stick up.

She gasped in alarm, pointing. “The four are five meters straight ahead!”

Immediately, both the middle and rear flank teams moved up to defensive positions around them. Shino, Kiba, and Kakashi slid forward into loose stances, prepared to move for a fast strike, while Tenten flicked off the tie on a smaller weapons scroll, ready to spray the path ahead with a lethal hail of shuriken.

One of the overturned crates rattled and fell to the ground, revealing a white-clad leg, which was hastily pulled back behind another larger crate. Hushed whispers came from the area.

“Is someone there?” Tenten called out. “We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to help.”

There was silence.

Then, they saw a brief flash as someone peeked out from behind the crate. More hushed whispers were exchanged and then silence again.

Finally, the four figures stepped out from behind the crates and into the sickly yellow light of the glowsticks and none of the members of the retrieval platoon could conceal their surprise.

Two identical boys with the face of Sasuke Uchiha and two identical redheaded girls were staring at them with sheepish, nervous looks.

There was only one word Naruto could think of: _“Shit.”_


	4. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mystery of the duplicates grows as the retrieval team is forced to consider the situation is more complicated than it appears. Elsewhere, another player steps onto the scene.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sakura's medical/science technobabble. Is that a warning? Should I warn for that? IDEK. "Discussion of cloning tropes"? "Sakura being fabulously logical"?  
> Definitely warning for violence, threat of mutilation in this chapter.

“Stand down,” Shikamaru ordered calmly, making a gesture. “Neji, Chouji, Lee – on guard. Shino, spread a net. I want to know how big this room is. Kiba, keep looking for that guy’s trail. Sakura... you’re on.”

The four copies – really, Naruto thought there wasn’t a better word to describe them, since they couldn’t be shadow clones – flinched a little as the platoon members moved, clearly nervous. He noted that they, like the other Sasuke and Karin they’d found, were barefoot and the cut of the clothing they were wearing was identical, but clean of blood.

“Hi, my name is Sakura,” Sakura said, again adopting a calm, kind voice. She moved forward slowly, deliberately posturing herself as non-threatening. “What are your names?”

Naruto blinked and shot a look at a thoughtful Shikamaru, who just indicated that he should watch.

The copies stared at each other, clearly confused and then looked back at Sakura.

“I don’t know,” said the Sasuke on the right.

“Are we supposed to have names?” the girl on the left – Karin... that was her name – asked.

“We’re twins, though,” the other Sasuke said, pointing at his copy. “Him and me. We’re twins. And the girls, they’re twins, too.”

Sakura smiled sweetly, looking at them. “Can you all do me a big favor and show me your right wrists?”

“Oh!” the Karin on the right said, excitedly. “You want to see the numbers.”

All four of them shoved their arms forward, numbers exposed.

“Mine’s higher,” the Sasuke on the right said. “Maybe I’m older.”

“No way,” the other Sasuke scoffed, elbowing him in the ribs. “We’re the same age.”

Sakura gave them an exceedingly patient look. “Do any of you know what happened?”

The boys shook their heads in the negative.

“Someone came,” the Karin on the right said.

“He felt funny,” the other Karin added as her copy nodded in agreement. “And then we couldn’t feel anyone.”

“Just us,” added the Karin on the right, “And the sleepers. Everyone else went dark.”

Naruto frowned – he didn’t like the sound of it and, from the looks of things, neither did Kakashi or Shikamaru.

The Sasuke on the right nodded. “All the doors were open, so we left our rooms and ended up meeting up. We knew we were twins right away.”

“We’re sorry about the crates,” said the other Sasuke, blushing a little. “We were hungry. Usually, they bring us food, but we couldn’t find anyone.”

Sakura nodded, “You must be really hungry. Hinata, do you have any spare rations?”

The Hyuuga heiress squeaked a little, not having expected to be called on, but started digging into her bag as she walked forward. “H-here,” she stammered, pulling out some wrapped field rations and a canteen.

“This is Hinata,” Sakura said. “She’s a good friend of mine. She’s going to get you set up with some food, but first can you tell me a little more about the sleepers?”

The copies exchanged glances and, finally, the Sasuke on the right piped up, “It’s hard to explain.”

“We could show you!” the other Sasuke said. He turned, pointing back into the darkness. “They’re back there.”

Hinata looked back towards Shikamaru. “It’s approximately where the chakra signatures were.”

Kiba closed his eyes, concentrating, and then spoke, “That’s where Juugo’s scent trail leads, too. He doubled back at one point, but it’s there.”

“It’s creepy, though,” the Karin on the left said. She and her copy shivered a little. “We don’t like it.”

Sakura gave her a patient smile. “Well, we’re here now. We’ll protect you, okay?”

The four copies exchanged glances and slowly nodded.

“Please show us the way,” Sakura said, holding out her hand.

The rightmost Karin copy quietly took her hand in one hand, reaching for the Sasuke copy she’d been standing near with the other. She nodded once.

“It’s this way,” the other Sasuke said, starting ahead, hand in hand with the other Karin.

Shikamaru signaled the team to advance.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Naruto muttered as they passed an overturned crate of medical supplies.

“So do I,” Shikamaru replied, “But stay frosty.”

Ahead of them, Kiba sneezed and looked back over his shoulder. “I smell antiseptic.”

“Sterile environment,” Shikamaru murmured, frowning.

Naruto resisted the urge to shudder and instead focused on Sakura’s back, noting the nervous set of her shoulders.

The copies led them to a doorway, the metal door shredded as if something large had torn through it at high velocity, and down into another hallway. The antiseptic smell was stronger and a dim light in the distance cast an eerie glow over everything. Streaks of blood coated the walls where it looked like something that had once been human had been smashed and dragged.

“This way,” the Sasuke copy at the front said, he and the copied girl standing on top of another ruined door for a moment before hopping down on the other side.

Sakura gasped in surprise ahead of them and Naruto and Shikamaru exchanged a worried glance.

On the other side of the door was a room full of monitors and consoles, many of which had technology that Naruto had only seen in passing on his journey with Jiraiya. Most of the monitors were smashed in, bloody smears painting the wall and floor, and debris was littered everywhere. A liquid-filled cylinder, running from the floor to the ceiling, stood solidly against the far wall, bathing the room in a pale, eerie glow and Naruto stopped dead in his tracks.

Inside it, the forms of Sasuke and Karin floated, still wearing the dark cloaks he’d seen them in when they’d fled the summit with the rest of their team. He could see the edge of a ragged, grievous wound in Sasuke’s side.

“Sasuke,” Naruto whispered. If that was really him, then...

One of the Sasuke copies ran over to a console near the cylinder, flicking a switch and opening a hydraulic door in the wall. He pointed inside. “The rest of everyone’s sleeping in there.”

Naruto willed himself to look away from the cylinder as he joined the rest of the team and approached the open door. They had all sort of stopped, staring wide-eyed into the next room as if the world had dropped out from under them. He looked inside, his jaw slowly dropping, and then stepped forward, eyes wide in a strange sort of horrified awe.

Two long rows of transparent horizontal cylinders were placed along either side of the next room, stacked two cylinders high on either side. Like the cylinder in the other room, these too were filled with liquid and were lit with an eerie light. On one side, they were filled with copies of Sasuke and on the other with copies of the girl, Karin.

“What is this?” he asked, staring. “Are they alive?”

Hinata made a hand seal. “Yes,” she said, quietly.

“How many?” asked Kakashi, his face pale.

Hinata looked at him, wide eyed and scared. “All of them.”

* * *

“What do you think?” Shikamaru asked.

Kakashi shifted uncomfortably and Yamato looked a little ill. Naruto, more than a little disturbed by their expressions, let his gaze drift to the copies. Hinata and Tenten were with them, showing them how to prepare their field rations and keeping them occupied by asking them what kind of names they wanted.

“I’m not sure,” Sakura sighed. “I need a minute to sort it all out in my head.”

“What about the ones in this tank?” Kakashi asked, indicating the large tank with the cloaked and wounded figures.

“Nearest I can figure is that the liquid’s saturated with oxygen,” Sakura said, tapping the side of the tank. “We’ve discussed it as a means of therapy in the hospital, but it’s very theoretical. Only civilian cities are interested in the extra expense. It’s really cold, so chances are that it’s being used to keep them sedated without risking doping them up. Unfortunately, it also means their wounds are healing slower and getting them out could put their lives in danger.”

Kakashi nodded absently.

“As to the rest, medically speaking, this is impossible,” Sakura said, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Everything about it’s impossible. People have tried to do this before and failed – Orochimaru was chased out of Konoha for attempting it and his experiment ended up killing fifty-nine infants.”

Naruto didn’t need to look to know that Yamato was even more uncomfortable than before.

“Regardless,” Sakura continued, straightening up, “The results of his experiment still enforced data from other, legitimate resources – they weren’t identical to their originals, except at the genetic level. The abilities, personality and even physical looks were often different, not to mention that they developed and learned at _normal_ rates.”

She paused, waving her hand in the direction of the copies, and sighed. “These... I don’t know. This doesn’t make sense. I don’t doubt they’re all genetic matches for the originals, but their ages and vocabulary... It doesn’t make sense.”

Shikamaru frowned, looking at her. “But if you had to guess?”

“If I had to guess,” Sakura said, inclining her head a little, “Sasuke and Karin were separated from their team and wounded to the point where it was easy to capture and transport them. Our mysterious third party here used samples from them to cultivate a small army of copies in a freakishly short time and found some way to cram enough information and vocabulary in their heads that they can communicate and reason at least with a child’s efficiency.”

“Could they have had samples beforehand?” Naruto asked, scratching his head.

“Doubtful,” Kakashi replied. “They’d have had no way of knowing about Sasuke’s potential, much less the girl’s, and who knows where or when Sasuke found her. There’d also have been no guarantee that Sasuke would activate his Sharingan regardless of a successful copy.”

“So they had to be familiar with both of their abilities and how they work,” Naruto sighed, rubbing his head. His brain hurt.

Sakura nodded, “Which is part of why it makes no sense. The timeline’s all wrong. You weren’t very far behind Sasuke’s team when we joined up with you guys and we only lost track of their trail twice in the whole time we’ve been chasing them. Assuming our mysterious third party already had everything here ready to go, that means that all these copies were made in a matter of _hours_ , a day at most, and at least six of them are already up, talking and walking, one of them with an active Sharingan.”

“Yeah, I get it, it’s weird,” Naruto sighed, frustrated. “What bugs me is _why_. What the hell would anyone want with a bunch of copies of them?”

* * *

The last body slumped to the side on the makeshift arena floor, a spray of hot blood hitting the wall. Above, the spectators cheered wildly and turned to collect their winnings. A door slid open in the wall, revealing a portly businessman with oily hair and a too-wide grin. “This way,” he said.

His only answer was a grunt and the sound a weapon being sheathed.

“You are a very talented fighter,” the portly man said, wringing his hands as they moved down the passageway. “I know many people who would be interested in your... talents. Where did you say you were from?”

“I didn’t,” came the reply. “Where’s my prize?”

“The Sharingan, yes, this way,” the portly businessman said, fumbling with his keychain as he unlocked a door. As soon as they were inside, he shut the door again and hobbled quickly to the other side of the room, where a dark-haired boy in a heavy black cloak was chained to a vertically tilted gurney. On the other side of the room, a red-headed girl in a black cloak was slumped in a corner, tied tightly, her glasses hanging askew. Both were gagged.

“What’s the deal with the girl?”

The portly businessman wrung his hands, spluttering, “Oh her! She is a silly thing – keeps him sedate. You can do what you like with her when you’re done with the procedure. Think of it as a bonus for putting on such a delightful show.”

The fighter grunted and the girl choked back a sob.

“We can get started right away,” the portly businessman said, indicating a chair. “I don’t have much in the way of sedatives and I am not so good as a medical nin but I know enough.”

“I want to see it – the Sharingan.”

“Of course, of course!” The portly businessman sputtered, rushing across the room. He wrenched the girl up roughly, and the boy on the gurney attempted to launch forward, eyes instantly going from dark grey to eerie crimson. He dragged her closer by the hair and the boy tried to shout beneath the gag, his gaze murderous.

“See?” the portly businessman said, his hand tearing at the girl’s scalp. “It’s the real deal.”

“Where did you find them?”

The portly businessman waved his free hand. “They were stumbling around, wounded. I noticed he had the Sharingan. It’d be such a waste to just leave it to die in some stupid child.”

The fighter shot a glance down at the girl - she looked like she was about to be ill. He drew his sword, bringing the massive blade around to the portly businessman’s throat in a movement that the man hardly had time to see, and gave him a grin that revealed sharpened teeth. “You’re lying. Now, you’re going to tell me the truth, or I might decide _you_ need some surgery. Where did you find them?”

The businessman trembled, blubbering rapidly, “Outside the town, t-two days ago! A man sold them to me – said he found them wounded on his land!”

“Which way?” the fighter asked.

“North!” the businessman wailed.

The fighter’s eyes narrowed and he flicked his arm, the businessman’s head sailing off. He flicked his eyes back to the boy and girl, sheathing his sword on his back. “Man, you two are so troublesome,” he sighed, walking forward and pulling the gag off of the boy. “I go to get my sword fixed and you guys go and get yourselves caught by common scum like that.”

The boy stared at him with dark, wide eyes. “Who are you?”

“That’s not funny, Sasuke,” the fighter said, frowning as he leaned down to remove the girl’s gag. She flinched away, curling in on herself, as if afraid he was going to hurt her. He shot a glance back at the boy, eyes widening at the genuinely bewildered expression. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

The boy shook his head in a clear _‘no.’_

Suigetsu cursed.


	5. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The retrieval team forms a plan. Juugo exits surgery. Suigetsu attempts to deal with the change in situation.

An uncomfortable silence permeated the air. Kakashi closed his eye for a moment, the muscles of his jaw clenching visibly under his mask, and then opened his eye, a chilling edge of steel present that Naruto hadn’t seen since their fight with Zabuza and Haku.

“Shikamaru, Naruto, I’m leaving you in charge,” Kakashi said flatly. “Get Sasuke and the girl and be ready to leave immediately when Yamato and I return with the sanitation team.”

Naruto resisted the urge to gape. A sanitation team was comprised of demolition specialists. They were only called in when something that could be used against the village absolutely needed to be reduced to unrecognizable slag and, even then, they needed the approval of the Hokage to mobilize.

Then again...

Naruto paused, looking at Kakashi. No, approval wouldn’t be a problem.

Shikamaru scoffed, running a hand over his hair, and gave both jounin a level gaze. “You don’t even want to retrieve information? That means you think whatever we stand to learn from the equipment isn’t worth the risk.”

Kakashi nodded absently and Yamato added, “We can’t take any chances. As helpful as it could be, it could easily be abused if it fell into certain hands...”

“Danzo,” Naruto concluded, comprehension dawning on his face.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Sakura piped up. Her brow was knit in concern. “What about the copies?”

“Wake as many as you can and have them ready to leave,” Kakashi said in a voice that left no room for argument.

“But Kakashi-sensei, there are a lot...” Sakura trailed off, clearly troubled.

_“Are they alive?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“How many?”_

_“All of them.”_

Naruto felt his stomach lurch and, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Shikamaru look away, frowning.

Kakashi closed his eye again. After a moment, he said in a rough voice: “It’ll take time to assemble a loyal team. That’s all I can offer.”

Sakura bowed formally, a strained but grateful look on her face.

And then the two adults were gone, leaving behind only the tell-tale puff that indicated a reverse summon.

“How are we going to do this?” Naruto asked, turning to Shikamaru and Sakura.

Sakura looked at him and then at the tank behind them. “Do you know how to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Naruto?”

“Yeah, pretty sure,” he replied. It wasn’t his strong suit, but he’d learned it. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I’m not sure what the system in the other room is set up like,” Sakura admitted. “If there’s a mass-system flush, I can’t revive them all on my own and... I don’t want to be the one to break that kind of news to Sasuke.”

Shikamaru shook his head slowly. “Do what you think is right about them, Sakura, but we have bigger fish to fry.”

Both Naruto and Sakura looked at him, the latter raising an eyebrow.

“This installation... something’s been bugging me about it since we got down here,” Shikamaru said, pulling out a cigarette and rolling it in his fingers. “Logically, a place like this would be secure and monitored. If there was an emergency or a break-in, there had to be an alarm triggered somewhere.”

“Like the barrier on Konoha,” Sakura murmured. “Breaching it with force triggers a village-wide alarm.”

“We didn’t find Juugo very far from here,” Shikamaru continued, nodding. “It’s a high probability we got down here before their response team could mobilize.”

Naruto grimaced. “And we’re trapped like rats in their basement.”

“Pretty much,” Shikamaru admitted, twiddling the cigarette. “Fortunately, this place plays to the strengths of much of our team. Between Shino’s bugs and the Hyuuga, we’ll have plenty of warning.”

Sakura nodded. “That last corridor is a bottleneck, too. We can easily stop them there for a time. The problem is getting out of here.”

“If this place makes any sense at all, there should be another entrance for freight or a freight elevator,” Naruto said, quickly scanning the room. “This equipment is too big to have come in through the top entrance or that corridor, so there has to be another somewhere. Maybe in the other room...”

“Let me handle that,” Shikamaru said, sticking the cigarette behind his ear. “You two worry about the rest.”

“Good luck, man,” Naruto said, as Sakura turned towards the tank behind them.

“You too,” Shikamaru said, turning to the others.

* * *

The curtain opened and, immediately, the not-Sasuke and his companion hurried to pull on their hoods. The surgeons exited in single file, Shizune following them and thanking them for coming out as fast as they could. As soon as they were out of the tent, Shizune turned and looked to the two cloaked youths with a smile: “He’s going to be okay.”

“Really?!” the not-Sasuke asked excitedly, his hood falling back off as he scrambled to his feet.

“Yep,” Shizune said patiently. “We repaired the damage and purged most of the sedative. He’s going to sleep for a bit while the rest flushes out of his system, but if you want, you can go in and see him now.”

The not-Sasuke turned, helping his redheaded companion to her feet with a smile, and the two disappeared behind the curtains.

“Just like a couple of little kids,” Shizune observed, smiling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t move from his side until he wakes up.”

Ino rolled her eyes. “You have no idea. It’s really wigging me out. Sasuke never acted like this, even as a kid.”

“What should we do about them?” Sai piped up. He held an ice pack to the bruise on his head. “It’s not like we can bring them out.”

Shizune sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I’d like to keep them here and run a few more tests on them. Whatever’s going on here is much more complicated than a field diagnosis can pinpoint. The good thing is that we already know what it’s not and narrows down the field as it were. We’re no longer looking for horses – we’re looking for zebras.”

Sai cocked his head to the side, a curious expression on his face.

“It means we’re looking for exotic causes,” Ino explained, rolling her eyes. “A horse, in this case, would be brain injury. A zebra would be obscure jutsu, poison, or infections.”

“Which is why I’m really looking forward to whatever the team’s able to find out about where Juugo’s been,” Shizune said. “The better idea we have of a timeline and environment, the better chance we have of figuring out what’s going on.”

Ino nodded, approaching the trunk of medical scrolls and opening it. “I’ll start looking for candidates.”

The flap to the tent opened, a masked ANBU leaning in. “Shizune, Kakashi and Yamato are here.”

“Please, send them in,” Shizune said.

Ino paused, her hand on a scroll. She had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

“So, my name is Sasuke Uchiha and her name is Karin?”

Suigetsu felt a vein under his eye twitch. “Yeah,” he said. This was just great, _just_ great. 

He and Juugo had been separated from Sasuke and Karin at the summit and they’d opted to retreat to a pre-selected rendezvous point. It was pretty tough to get clear, but they’d made it and then a heavily injured Sasuke and Karin arrived, a pursuit team hot on their heels. Sasuke was in poor shape and Karin was little better after she healed the worst of it. They took to the road again and then, a few days ago, they’d gotten split up a second time, when the path they were taking was destroyed in a last ditch effort by whoever was pursing them. Fortunately, it delayed their pursuers, too.

Suigetsu and Juugo found themselves far west of a small town and learned that the other, shorter path ended not too far away. Suigetsu opted to take the town, see if Karin and Sasuke had arrived ahead of them, and get his sword repaired. Juugo decided to scout the forest to the north of town, closer to where the other path supposedly ended. Agreeing on a spot to meet, the two parted ways.

It was in town that Suigetsu heard about that fat merchant’s little back-alley competition and the _prize._ As soon as his sword was fixed, he signed himself up, proceeded to tear through those second-rate missing nin like they were wet paper and marched in there to collect his teammates.

He did not expect _this._

“And your name is Suigetsu and you’re our teammate?” Sasuke asked curiously, walking alongside him as they walked through the town. Karin lingered at the Uchiha’s side, uncharacteristically complacent. Both displayed a freakish lack of their usual moodiness and vitriol – in fact, he’d never seen Sasuke this animated in all the time they’d worked together! Apparently, losing their memories did wonders for both their temperaments.

“Yes,” Suigetsu sighed, resisting the urge to rub his temples in frustration. “We’re going to meet the fourth member of our team, Juugo.”

“Oh,” Sasuke said, blinking. “I don’t remember him. How long have we been a team?”

“Not very long,” Suigetsu answered. “But we’re a good team. We got separated and Juugo and I went to look for you.”

Juugo would _not_ be happy when he found out where Suigetsu found them, but would probably switch right into mother hen mode when he found out they had amnesia.

And then there was Madara...

Suigetsu shuddered. He didn’t want to think about what that guy would do when he found out.

“I’m really sorry I can’t remember,” Sasuke said, as genuine and innocent as a child. “It’s the strangest thing.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Suigetsu sighed, desperately wishing he believed in the words he was about to say, “Once we meet up with Juugo, we’ll get you guys some help and you’ll get better, you’ll see.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?” Karin asked, adjusting her glasses.

Suigetsu hesitated. He didn’t need her giving him a hard time just because he lied once and especially not now, since they were relying on him for protection. Finally, he admitted, “I... I’ve heard things. Losing your memories... it’s not good. Sometimes, it means you’re screwed. It’s like... it’s worse than being dead. Everything that made you who you are – gone. Not coming back. You abilities as a ninja could be ruined completely.”

Sasuke stopped, paling, and then hurried to catch up. “But we can get them back, right? There’s a chance?”

“I don’t know,” Suigetsu said, honestly. “I’m not a medic. Karin, you were the closest we had to one.”

Karin stared at him, wide eyed. “So, we’re screwed?”

Suigetsu shook his head. “Let’s just find Juugo first. Then, we’ll find you two a good doctor and get this all sorted out.”

Sasuke nodded absently and the small group lapsed into an awkward silence.

Suigetsu found it a welcome reprieve.

“By the way, Suigetsu – what’s the Sharingan?”

The swordsman resisted the urge to hit Sasuke.

* * *

“Careful, careful,” Sakura called out from the ground.

Naruto’s clone moved slowly, dragging the unconscious form of Karin to the hatch in the top of the tank. “It’s really cold!” he whined, handing the girl up through the small hatch to the real Naruto, and then disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Naruto leapt to the floor and quickly put the redheaded girl down in front of Sakura, who immediately began giving her mouth-to-mouth. It didn’t take long before Karin started to cough up clear fluid and Sakura had Naruto help her roll the girl onto her side to help drain the fluid.

“Easy,” Sakura said as they rolled the girl back. “Naruto, get me the blanket.”

Naruto quickly pulled the blanket out of Sakura’s field kit and unwrapped it, the mylar crinkling as it unfolded. He fluffed it out and approached, waiting until Sakura had guided the redheaded girl into a sitting position to drape it around her shoulders.

“Karin... Karin, I need you to listen to me,” Sakura said, calmly, one hand on the other girl’s chin and the other holding up a small penlight. “I need you to follow this light for me, okay?”

Karin was shivering badly, flinching at the light as Sakura moved it.

“Karin, I know you’re cold, but you have to listen to me,” Sakura said, “Focus on my voice.”

“Who... w-what...” the girl managed, her teeth clicking with every shiver.

“Try not to talk right now,” Sakura said, pulling the mylar blanket a little tighter around the other girl’s shoulders. “Your body temperature is really low. Just sit tight under this blanket for a while and you’ll start to warm up, okay?”

“S-S-Sas...ke... wh-where’s S-s-sasuke?” Karin stammered out, shaking with cold. Her fingers latched on to Sakura’s arm in an icy, white-knuckled grip.

“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine,” Sakura assured her, gently prying the other girl’s hand free. “Naruto’s getting him now.”

Naruto took that as his cue to make another clone and scramble back up to the top of the tank. The clone shuddered and then dove into the freezing liquid, quickly swimming to where Sasuke floated unconscious. Hooking him under the arm, the clone dragged him back to the top and the real Naruto carefully reached down to haul Sasuke out by the armpits.

“Holy shit,” Naruto muttered, looking at the wound in Sasuke’s side. “Sakura - he’s really fucked up! I can see bone!”

“Get him down here!” Sakura yelled back.

Naruto gathered Sasuke back up into his arms and ran down the side of the tank with chakra, making the transition to the floor as gentle as he could. He then kneeled, carefully depositing the injured Uchiha on the floor.

Sakura frowned at the wound for a second before starting mouth-to-mouth.

Naruto tried not to show how uncomfortable it made him seeing her do that. Even if it was just mouth-to-mouth, after the summit...

He shook his head. This was not the time or place.

Sasuke coughed violently, clear liquid draining from his mouth and nose.

“There we go,” Sakura said, triumphantly. “Help me roll him.”

They held him in that position until he finished coughing up the clear fluid and then rolled him back, mindful of the wound in his side.

“Blanket?” Naruto asked, getting to his feet.

“Yep,” Sakura said, her attention now completely on the wound, “And the whole kit.”

“H-how b-bad...?” Karin asked, shivering. Her lips were already looking a little less blue. “T-tried... t-to... h-heal...”

Naruto put the kit down next to Sakura and unfolded the blanket, draping it over Sasuke’s body, careful to leave the wound exposed.

“Yeah, I can see evidence of healing – looks like it was all the way to the lung originally,” Sakura commented, raising an eyebrow. She then leaned forward, the pen light out again and looked down into Sasuke’s face as she manually opened one of his eyes. “Sasuke, can you hear me?”

He flinched, turning his head away from her hands.

“Sasuke, I need you to stay still and focus on my voice,” Sakura said. “I know you’re cold, but you’re badly injured. Don’t move.”

“K-k-k...” Sasuke turned his head, eyes opening with a sluggish, but increasing alertness and darting around as if looking.

Naruto gave him a curious glance and hazarded a guess, “Karin? She’s okay – she’s right here.”

Sasuke’s eyes didn’t stop moving until he saw the girl’s red hair.

“Hand me the dressing, will you?” Sakura said, forming hand seals and then placing her hands over the wound, a steady green glow bathing the tissue. “I can fix the rest of the organ damage and clean it out, but we’ll have to do the rest later when we’re in friendly territory.”

Naruto nodded as he opened her kit, understanding – Sakura could heal Sasuke completely, but it would drain a lot of chakra. If something happened, then Sakura couldn’t heal anyone else who needed it. Additionally, as long as Sasuke had a gaping hole in his side, he’d be less inclined to bolt.

“That one – dressings,” Sakura indicated, moving her hands back a little. “And then bandages.”

Naruto pulled out both wrapped packages for her and tore them open.

The green glow faded and Sakura took the dressing first, pressing it firmly to the open wound. She then started working on the bandages, saying, “Sasuke, you need to listen to me. This wound is very serious. You try to attack and you’ll tear your guts open and bleed out. We’re in a very tight spot and I can’t spare the chakra to fix you up if you do something stupid, do you understand?”

Sasuke ignored her, his head turned away.

“Sasuke,” Sakura growled, grabbing his chin and forcing him to look at her. “Do you understand?”

Sasuke glared at her, but when she did not back down, he turned his head away and let out a shaky breath.

“Sakura!”

“Sakura!”

Naruto paled, looking up at the sources of the identical voices running headlong for them, a frazzled Hinata following in hot pursuit and demanding they stop.

Karin turned her head, still shivering, and promptly froze in place, staring wide-eyed at the approaching pair of identical boys. Her eyes never left them, not even as they dropped to their hands and knees next to Naruto and Sakura like a pair of small children and peered curiously at both Sasuke and Karin. 

“Are they okay?” one asked, curiously, elbowing his ‘twin’ in the ribs to get a better look.

“Yeah, is big brother okay?” the other asked, elbowing him right back.

The look on Sasuke’s face could be called almost comical as he stared at them with impossibly wide eyes.

“I’m Yotsu,” the first one said.

“And I’m Itsuo,” the second added. “And you’re our big brother!”


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto and Sakura bring Sasuke and Karin up to speed. Kakashi briefs Shizune. Suigetsu finds a lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some violence.

Sasuke Uchiha prided himself on his ability to see through illusions. He spent years honing those abilities into an almost instinctive nature, and, in his years of training, he’d seen some pretty screwy illusions.

This, however, was a new one on him.

It was like staring at a set of mirrors. Both boys had his face and his hair, cut in the exact same style. Even their builds were identical and, were it not for the fact he _knew_ Itachi was his only brother, he could have sworn that he really had been born an identical triplet with how they looked. It was flat out impossible that these two should exist, which meant it _had_ to be an illusion.

And yet, Sasuke had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that it wasn’t. Now that he was a little more alert, every sense in his body was telling him he was freezing cold, his throat hurt like hell from coughing up that water, his lungs still burned, his side ached dully and he was lying on a really uncomfortable metal floor with a mylar blanket on top of him. Last thing he remembered, he and Karin had been in the woods and his side had started bleeding again. This place, wherever it was, certainly wasn’t the woods.

What on earth was going on?

“Now, now, your _brother_ is very badly hurt,” Sakura said, barely concealing a sigh and rolling her eyes a little as she gently tugged the boys back. “He needs some rest. You’ll have to save your questions for later.”

“But Sakura...!” the one who’d called himself Itsuo whined.

“No buts,” Sakura ordered sharply.

Both boys visibly sulked and Sasuke found himself thinking the expression looked downright bizarre on his face. It was so childish.

Naruto cleared his throat and gave them a sheepish smile. “Hey, you guys, do you two know of any other doors in this place?”

The ‘brothers’ blinked, immediately perking back up.

“We found a few when we were looking for food, right?” the other one, Yotsu, piped up, his twin nodding in the affirmative.

Right now, the only way they could be told apart is that they hadn’t really moved far from where they were when they’d said their names. If they moved or changed spots, Sasuke would be hard-pressed to figure out which was which.

“Awesome,” Naruto said, sounding more than a little relieved. “You think you and the girls could show those doors to Kiba and Hinata while your big brother gets some rest? He’ll probably be all rested by the time you’re done.”

The girls? Sasuke narrowed his eyes in confusion, even as he resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Naruto’s pretty transparent attempt to get the two to leave.

“Really?” Itsuo asked, looking cautiously to Sakura, who smiled pleasantly and nodded in the affirmative.

Both boys scrambled to their feet again. “We’ll be back, big brother!” the other said excitedly, and then they were out of his line of sight.

“I’m sorry, Naruto, Sakura,” a semi-familiar whispery girl’s voice said from somewhere nearby. “They got away from me.”

Naruto cast another sheepish grin in the voice’s direction. “It’s okay, Hinata. We had to tell him anyway.”

“I should probably go and catch up to them.” There was a pause and a shuffle. “The girls picked out names, too. Yon and Agako.”

Sakura appeared to consider it and then nodded, smiling a little. “Good luck with them, Hinata.”

“Likewise,” Hinata replied and then he could hear the retreating sound of footfalls as she hurried away.

Sasuke felt someone touch his hand and shifted his head a little to see Karin, wrapped up in a shiny mylar blanket, her damp hair looking almost three shades darker. Her fingers curled, lightly squeezing his hand as she gave him an intense, burning look, and mouthed the words “I’ll ask.” He stiffly pulled his hand closed to grip hers and let it go.

Karin turned her head and, shakily, asked, “What’s going on? Where are we? Who were those boys?”

Yes, Sasuke thought acidly, there had better be a damn good explanation for this.

Naruto and Sakura exchanged a strained look.

“Well, this is going to sound really crazy,” Naruto started, rubbing the back of his head nervously. “But a while ago, we ran into your buddy Juugo while we were looking for you.”

“He was bleeding out from an abdominal wound and it looked like someone had tried to use sedatives to bring him down,” Sakura added. “We stopped the bleeding, got him stable and sent him to back to Konoha for surgery.”

Konoha? Hadn’t it been destroyed? Still, it didn’t bode well for his team. Getting Juugo out from under their noses wasn’t going to be easy.

“Right, right!” Naruto said. “But before he passed out, he asked us to help you two and that’s where things got weird. See, the both of you were with him, only it _wasn’t_ you. I mean, it was and it wasn’t - they looked like you, smelled like you, but didn’t have any memories or scars or anything.”

Karin’s eyes narrowed. “So, there was a copy of me there, too?”

“Copy, yes, that’s a good way of putting it,” Sakura said, wryly. “There are also two more copies of you to go with those boys you just saw.”

Ah, so ‘the girls’ had meant copies of Karin, then.

“How is this possible?” Karin asked.

Naruto shook his head and Sakura shrugged, adding, “I wish I knew. Believe me, we’re as much in the dark about this as you are.”

Sasuke shivered under the blanket, pain shooting up his side. “W-Where are we?” he managed.

Naruto nodded, picking up the story, “Right now, we’re about twenty meters underground - I think this is some kind of medical facility or something, I’m not sure. Anyway, we tracked Juugo’s blood trail back to a cave up top and it led all the way down here. We found those two and the girls wandering around in another room, looking for food, and then fished you two out of that tank behind you.”

The blond paused, leaning back. “Nearest I can figure, Juugo saw you two floating in the tank, thought you were dead, found the copies and then turned this place into a practical charnel house trying to get them out, thinking they were you.”

Karin and Sasuke exchanged a quick glance. 

“So,” Karin said, weirdly calm, “There are _three_ copies of me and Sasuke running around and you have no idea what’s going on?”

Sakura and Naruto looked at each other again. They appeared to have a quick and silent discussion through their expressions and then Sakura turned back to them, a wan smile on her lips as she said, “Three so far, yes.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes in suspicion and squeezed Karin’s fingers in his hand again.

Karin closed her eyes, her chakra pulsing for a moment, and then she opened her eyes, face paling. “I can feel them,” she paused, “There are a _lot_ more than three, aren’t there?”

Sakura chewed her lip apprehensively and then nodded.

“Show us,” Sasuke demanded.

* * *

“There’s more than two?” Shizune hissed quietly, paling as she pulled Kakashi and Yamato aside.

Kakashi sighed, rubbing his forehead with one hand, “A lot more. A whole lot more.”

“How many are we talking about here?” Shizune asked.

“Close to a hundred total,” Yamato replied, his face deadly serious.

“A hundred!” Shizune’s voice took on a slightly hysterical pitch. Two she could definitely hide, but a hundred? There’s no way she could pull that off with the situation as it was. That was insane! “And they’re all alive?”

Kakashi nodded. “And the four conscious ones are no better off than the two we sent you – though the girls seem a little less... clingy. Understandable, given what this one likely saw during their rescue.”

Shizune took a deep breath, sighing heavily, and rubbed her forehead as she stepped back and sunk into a chair. A hundred, childlike teenagers, each one of them sharing their face with wanted criminals, no memory and half of them had one of the most devastating doujutsu known to the ninja world – truly, the situation was worse than she could have feared. What could she do? What _should_ she do?

These kids lacked any memory of the crimes of Sasuke Uchiha and his accomplice, but that wouldn’t matter to the hunter nin or bounty hunters. It also wouldn’t take a genius to figure out there was something wrong about them when they proved incapable of fighting back and none of the other nations would dare pass up an opportunity to get their hands on a Sharingan user who couldn’t fight back and was, for all intents and purposes, a blank slate. That is, only if another nation wasn’t already behind this.

Shizune wrung her hands and inwardly wished Tsunade would wake up. This whole situation was way out of her league.

“Look, there isn’t a lot of time,” Kakashi said sternly, “And I don’t want to leave my team down there any longer than I have to. I need to take a full sanitation team, but we can’t leave Tsunade unprotected. How many loyal ANBU do we have?”

Shizune closed her eyes for a moment, taking a calming breath, and focused on the idea that she was just setting up normal administrative tasks. “All ANBU loyal to Tsunade have been stationed around this tent and key archives, with orders to admit no one without my permission. I’ll extend permission to you as well.”

“Good, good,” Kakashi nodded, turning his head. “Yamato, you head the armory and get the high explosives. Meet us back outside.”

Yamato gave him a sharp nod in acknowledgement, formed a hand seal and sunk into the ground, disappearing from sight.

“Kakashi-sensei,” Ino managed, her brow furrowed in worry, “What will happen to them?”

Kakashi stiffened and Shizune stood, looking away from the jounin’s face as she drifted back towards the curtained off area with the patients. So, Kakashi _had_ made a decision about the unconscious ones already. Perhaps it was cold of him, but maybe it would be more merciful in the end. These kids would never cease to be pursued, only torture and death awaited them at the hands of enemy nations, and, worst of all, they wouldn’t know _why._

“Sakura is waking up as many as she can,” Kakashi stated flatly.

Shizune knew he didn’t think Sakura could wake them all. 

“I want to come back with you and help,” Sai piped up. “I owe it to Naruto.”

“You can pay him back by protecting these guys here,” Kakashi countered in a tone that left no room for argument. “We’re counting on you.”

Shizune took the opportunity to peek behind the curtain, noting the two youths had pulled up chairs to the bed. Idly, she wondered if she should tell them about the others Kakashi’s team had found. Would they even understand there were others exactly like them?

Shizune’s eyes widened and she turned back. “Kakashi, how alike were the other ones? Were they similar or _identical?”_

Kakashi’s eye narrowed. “Exactly identical, why?”

“How exact?” she pressed.

“I’ve seen less similar shadow clones,” Kakashi answered.

Shizune nodded, a smile dawning as she approached Ino. “I think I know what our zebra might be. We’re going to need to do a physical exam to confirm it.”

* * *

Suigetsu frowned as they approached a large clearing from the south. Juugo was supposed to be around here somewhere, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Are we...” Sasuke started.

“Quiet,” Suigetsu said, holding up his hand and making a ‘get down’ gesture. “Something’s not right.”

Sasuke and Karin awkwardly stood there and Suigetsu resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“You two stay right here,” he told them, handing them some spare kunai. “Keep your heads down and try not to stab yourselves. I’m going to do a quick walk-around. I’ll be right back, understand?”

Both nodded and rather poorly ducked down into the bushes. Honestly, even a genin fresh out of the softest academies in the five countries could have spotted them, but it was a start.

Grumbling to himself about having to hop around like some goddamn Leaf ninja, Suigetsu leapt up into the trees and started to circle the clearing, scanning the ground below. Several sets of tracks came through here and he could see some dried blood spatter. He’d need to drop down to get a better look at the tracks near them, but it looked like someone severely injured had made their way here and the others had gone in the direction the injured person had come from.

Suigetsu frowned. This didn’t look good. If Juugo was in trouble, he wasn’t sure he could bail him out, not with the mental state of his present company. Babysitting them while having to attempt a rescue was tantamount to signing his death warrant.

And then there was the disturbing lack of _nature_ around here.

No birdsong, no squirrels or what have you – _mud jutsu!_

Suigetsu cursed, driving out of the tree to avoid it and slinging his sword free as he twisted midair. Using the momentum of the sword, he managed to swing around and launch off a one-handed water jutsu in the direction of his attackers. A dozen men in nondescript gear with blank forehead protectors exited the bushes.

Okay, so no visible clues as to nationality. He could work with that. Just meant he wouldn’t be able to check for a bounty on them after he killed them all.

With a grin, Suigetsu hefted his sword and launched into the fray, careful to keep them from noticing his concealed teammates. The numbers were a little more than he liked, but he could manage. He’d faced more than this.

“Behind you!” Karin shrieked.

Suigetsu turned, cursing as he blocked one sword only to get stabbed by a second one that practically stopped him in his tracks. This one was laced with lightning chakra, one of his only weaknesses. Cursing, he backhanded the offender, only to stop in shock as a black-cloaked blur shot past him and landed on the man’s chest, plunging a kunai down in a single ribcage-shattering blow.

It was Sasuke, who was suddenly rolling and lashing out at another man with the feral abandon and raw pragmatism of an enraged and frightened child.

Pressure on the sword he was blocking suddenly let up and Suigetsu turned in time to watch the man drop, revealing a panting and terrified Karin with a bloody kunai.

He smiled, pulling the sword out of his side, and gave her a thumbs up. “Help Sasuke,” he called over his shoulder, and hefted his sword. Three of the strange men eyed him warily and he gave them a cruel grin.

Karin gave him a jerky nod and dashed off after Sasuke.

Suigetsu made quick work of his opponents, settling for quickly and efficiently eliminating them since he no longer had to worry about keeping them away from a hiding place. But he still had his teammates to worry about. However lucky those two idiots had been so far, he doubted it could hold for much longer. Fear only went so far and, without their memories, those two were little better than civilians.

One sweep of the blade later and he turned, just as Sasuke slammed into the legs of the last man standing, sending him barreling to the ground. Karin then pounced, slamming her kunai into the man’s throat.

Suigetsu walked over and, with a grunt, stuck his sword into the ground. “You two all right?”

Sasuke, his Sharingan already bleeding back to grey, and Karin both turned their heads to look at him with wide, childlike eyes, as if they had no concept of what they’d done.

“Did we do it right?” Sasuke asked, hopefully. “It seemed like the right thing to do, but I couldn’t remember.”

In truth, it was pretty shoddy work even for the greenest genin and completely inefficient. He should have chastised them for not staying put and putting themselves in danger. What the hell were they thinking? They knew they couldn’t remember anything. Both of them were _lucky_ to be alive and, yet, Suigetsu found that the words had stuck on his tongue. The two of them just looked so stupidly hopeful that he couldn’t say it.

“Maybe it might have jogged your memories a little bit,” Suigetsu said, at last, and leaned forward, rifling through the man’s pockets. “Do me a favor: start looking through their clothing for anything useful.”

Smiling like a pair of idiot kids, Sasuke and Karin scrambled to do as he’d asked.

This situation was completely insane, Suigetsu decided, pocketing what was left of the man’s senbon and kunai. He wasn’t a leader or a teacher or a babysitter and he certainly shouldn’t have just told them what he did. There was no sense in getting their hopes up. He cursed inwardly – he must be getting soft or something.

“I think I found something!” Karin called out, running back up to him with a bloody piece of paper in her hands. Sasuke followed her, shouldering a few belts worth of pilfered kunai pouches.

“It’s a map,” Suigetsu said, taking it from her and wiping some of the blood off. He turned it around, looking up at the skyline, and then turned it again. “Looks like there’s some kind of base nearby.”

Sasuke peered over his shoulder, curiously. “Do you think Juugo could be there?”

“Not sure,” Suigetsu murmured and frowned, wishing he’d left at least one of these bastards alive. Oh well, too late now. “Karin, you feel any vibes coming from over that way?”

Karin gave him a look like she didn’t have clue what he was talking about.

...Which of _course_ she didn’t, because she _didn’t_ remember.

“Right,” Suigestu sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose with his forefingers and trying not to think about what a colossal idiot he was. He pointed this time. “Look over there, close your eyes, and tell me what you feel.”

Karin, looking very uncertain about it, did just that and, with a little bit of surprise in her voice, said, “It feels... _crowded_ over there! I don’t like it.”

“So, that must be the front entrance,” Suigetsu concluded, tapping his finger against the map. He then drew his finger across the map until it got to the second entrance marked. “Karin, how does it look a little further on and to your right?”

“It feels like...” she paused, opening her eyes. “I... I don’t know if I quite have the word for it. Familiar, maybe?”

Suigetsu nodded, picking up his sword. “That’s got to be Juugo, then. Let’s go.”

Maybe there was some hope for Sasuke and Karin yet.

* * *

“Now, I’m going to warn you, this may come as something of a shock,” Sakura said seriously, her hand on the switch for the door.

“Just open it,” Sasuke growled unhappily and tried to push Naruto’s arm off his shoulder – Sasuke Uchiha would _not_ be helped into that room like a crippled civilian, he refused. His side ached sharply and he winced, unconsciously sagging on still too-numb legs, but Naruto was there with one arm slung around his shoulder, holding him up and on his feet. Sasuke bristled at the contact.

Karin stared ahead at the doors, her posture rigid under the blanket she was wrapped in. Her color hadn’t returned, not since she’d made that odd statement about there being a lot more than three copies. It wasn’t like her and it made Sasuke nervous.

Sakura flicked the switch and the door rumbled open with a hydraulic hiss.

Two long rows of tanks were stacked on either side of the room, their contents blurry. Sasuke squinted, trying to focus, and took a step forward. His legs wobbled threateningly and Naruto readjusted his grip. “Closer,” Sasuke ordered, “Take me closer.”

Naruto gave Sakura a look, something unspoken passing between them, and then carefully helped Sasuke into the room. Karin drifted ahead of them like a ghost, approaching the cylinders to their right, and Naruto shifted, guiding Sasuke towards the tanks on the left side.

“Can you see okay?” the idiot blond asked, but Sasuke didn’t hear him: he was too busy staring at the contents of the tanks in front of him.

It was _him_ , naked and sleeping in fluid, like he’d been pickled. Scars and calluses pockmarked the hands and skin of this other him, exactly mirroring the ones on his own body. There was even a scar on this other’s side where the gaping hole in his side was right now. And the one in the tank above him was exactly the same, a perfect copy.

Sasuke stumbled forward, pushing Naruto away, and placed his hands on the tank, running his hands down the glass as he moved on shaking legs to the next tanks in the line. Again, it was him, the same as the other two. This was not possible, this couldn’t be possible. He stumbled to the next set of tanks and shook his head in denial at the _sameness._

This wasn’t right, it wasn’t possible.

“There’s about a hundred of them,” Sakura said quietly, “All the same.”

This was _wrong._

Sasuke shoved himself away from the tanks violently, slapping away Naruto’s arm, and stumbled as far as he could before he dropped to his knees and vomited.


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pieces of the puzzle start to come together as the shadows begin to move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence and character death.

“Sasuke, you have to calm down,” Sakura said, rushing to Sasuke’s side. “You’ll reopen your wound!”

The Uchiha keened like a wounded animal and blindly shoved her away, knocking her off balance. Naruto immediately jumped forward, quickly pinning his former friend in place and shot a quick look to Sakura.

Sakura ground her teeth in frustration and signaled she was okay. She then dug into her medical pouch again, withdrawing a small needle. “Hold him,” she ordered, approaching again.

Sasuke howled incoherently, struggling harder against Naruto’s grip and kicking back against the floor in an attempt to dislodge the blond.

“Sasuke, I’m giving you a sedative to calm you down,” Sakura explained as she quickly stuck the needle in his upper arm. She slowly depressed the plunger. “It’s okay, it’s okay. You’re just going to feel a little tired.”

Sasuke’s howl turned into a miserable whine as his whole body started to slacken in Naruto’s arms. Whatever Sakura had given Sasuke, Naruto was grateful it was fast. He slowly lowered the Uchiha into a sitting position, only letting go when he was sure there was no resistance. Sasuke sagged in place, teetering dangerously, and Naruto again had to reach out and catch him before he fell over.

“Is he going to be okay?” Karin asked, trembling like a leaf in the wind.

Sakura nodded as she stood, tossing away the needle. “He’ll be fine – it’s a relatively low dose. He’s just going to need some rest.” She paused, looking at the other girl, and smiled as she held out her hand: “Why don’t you come here and stay with him? Make sure he doesn’t reopen his wounds and all that, ok?”

Karin nodded numbly, shuffling forward, and kneeled next to Sasuke, who slumped against her.

“I don’t understand,” Sasuke mumbled. “Why? _Who_ would do this?”

Naruto clenched his hands into fists as he backed off, his face stormy. He could think of a few people. He cracked his knuckles, the urge to punch something rising just thinking about it. No one deserved this, not even someone as messed up as Sasuke.

“We don’t know,” Sakura said, kneeling in front of him. “But – look at me, Sasuke, look – I promise you they’re not going to get away with this. We’re going to stop it right here.”

“What about them?” Karin asked, hesitantly looking back to the tanks.

Sakura smiled reassuringly, “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”

* * *

Shikamaru rolled the cigarette in his fingers, his eyes closed as he took mental stock of the situation. He frowned, rolling the cigarette again, and looked down the hall towards the copies dogging Hinata’s heels. He’d been resolved to kill Sasuke – he still was – but this... This was not what he’d signed on for when he’d taken the mission. They were in well over their heads with this one.

“Oy, Shikamaru,” Kiba called out, leaning on one of the far doorframes. “I found something you should see.”

Shikamaru pushed off the wall, stuffing the cigarette behind his ear, and followed the Inzuka through the door and down another corridor.

“It’s in here,” Kiba said, stopping in front of a door marked in biohazard signs. He pressed a button on the control panel beside it and the door slid open with a hydraulic hiss, revealing a darkened, bitterly cold room.

Shikamaru cracked another glow stick and stepped inside. He kneeled, frowning as he brought the glow stick closer, and then raised the glow stick, scanning the rest of the room quietly.

This...

This was sick.

“Oi!” Neji called out from the far end of the hallway. “Heads up, Nara, we’ve got movement upstairs.”

Shikamaru cursed under his breath and stood, reentering the hallway. “How many?”

“Too many,” Neji said soberly.

Hinata appeared behind Neji then, face flustered.

“Tell me you have good news,” Shikamaru pleaded, rubbing his forehead tiredly.

Hinata gave her cousin a look and then nodded, facing Shikamaru. “We found a freight elevator. Tenten’s working on getting it some power.”

“Good, good,” Shikamaru said, rubbing his fingertips together as he thought. “Hinata, find out what the status is with Naruto and Sakura. Neji, how much time do we have?”

“Not a whole lot,” Neji admitted. “If we collapse that first bottleneck corridor, we can buy some more time.”

“Tell Shino to pull back his bugs and do it,” Shikamaru said, nodding. This was going to cut it close, but it was doable. “Be ready to move fast.”

Neji and Hinata both nodded in agreement and disappeared back down the other corridor.

Shikamaru watched them leave.

“Should we tell Naruto and Sakura?” Kiba asked, indicating the darkened doorway again, his expression clearly troubled.

Shikamaru took a deep breath, blinking slowly, and ran a hand down his face as he steadied himself. “No,” he said, after a moment. “No, they’ve got enough to worry about as it is. Let’s just focus on getting out of here alive.”

Kiba nodded, swallowing a bitter grimace as he looked back one last time and then turned his head away from the room and the mutilated corpses within, each bearing the face of Sasuke Uchiha, aged twelve.

* * *

“All right,” Sakura said, looking at the tank controls. “It looks like the tanks are set up in linked pairs, one on this side and one on the other.”

Naruto nodded, wandering to the other side. “And it’s the same set up as the tank in the other room?”

“Similar, yes,” Sakura said, tapping the controls. “Triggering one side automatically dumps the other, with a thirty second delay between the two. You think you can handle it?”

“Of course!” Naruto said, looking over his shoulder at her. “Mouth-to-mouth isn’t that hard.”

“All the same, we’ll start with one set and then you can go wild with the shadow clones,” Sakura said, giving him a small smile. “What side do you want to take?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Naruto shrugged.

“All right, you take the right side,” Sakura said, pointing to the side with the copies of Karin.

“No,” Sasuke piped up, glowering tiredly from his seat on the floor, startling Karin a little. Sasuke raised a wobbly hand, “Not him.”

“And why is that?” Sakura asked.

Sasuke made a face. “Idiot... would mess it up...”

“Like hell I would, jackass,” Naruto grumbled.

“Would you rather have Naruto henge into me?” Sakura asked tartly, her hands on her hips. 

Sasuke blushed a little, shaking his head. “It’s still him.”

“It’s not like I’m making out with her, you idiot bastard,” Naruto piped up, scowling. “It’s just mouth-to-mouth, from a shadow clone, no less! And it’s not like she’s your girlfriend, is it?”

Sasuke glared daggers at him, but finally leaned back with a huff as Karin sputtered and blushed.

“Good, I’m so glad we’ve got that settled,” Sakura said, rolling her eyes and returning to the tank. “Get ready, Naruto.”

Naruto nodded, taking his position next to her. He made a quick hand sign, three shadow clones appearing beside him. Two moved to stand by the other tank, ready and waiting to act. The third disappeared towards the front of the room, looking for blankets they could use.

Sakura hit a button on the control panel. There was a loud beep and the fluid immediately began to drain from the tank. As soon as it was drained, the glass popped up with a hiss, rotating back into a hidden housing. Sakura and Naruto lifted the Sasuke copy out, carefully placing him on the floor and, immediately, she began to clear the copy’s airway, starting mouth-to-mouth. 

The second tank started to drain and Naruto’s shadow clones went to work.

Meanwhile, the Sasuke copy began to cough, sputtering, and they rolled him over onto his side until all the fluid was drained. Carefully, they sat him up, Naruto discreetly taking a look at the number on the copy’s wrist and mouthing ‘twelve.’

“Hey, there, can you hear me?” Sakura asked, looking into the shivering copy’s face. “Can you tell me your name?”

He stared at her a moment, his eyes narrowing in clear recognition. A spark of anger flickered in his eyes for a moment and then his whole frame suddenly stiffened, pupils dilating rapidly as the Sharingan activated. It shifted through four separate forms in the space of a heartbeat before the eyes returned to their normal grey color. The copy’s body slumped a little, his head lowering. When he raised it again, his expression shifted to confusion. “I... can’t remember. I knew it a second ago,” he said, at last, and screwed up his face, shivering. “I’m cold.”

Sakura looked at Naruto in shock, and then towards the original Sasuke and Karin, who both wore expressions of horror. “He recognized me for a moment. You just saw that, didn’t you?” she asked, stunned.

“It’s not just him,” one of Naruto’s shadow clones called out. The other clone was waving his hand in front of the Karin copy’s face while she stared at him like a lost child. The clone jerked his thumb at her and added, “She just did the same thing.”

“His chakra,” Karin piped up, thoughtfully. “It was the same before, then it suddenly flared up and now... it’s like it’s subdued.”

Sakura quickly turned to the Sasuke copy in front of her and started examining his face, neck and torso with her hands. “His scars... His scars are gone,” she announced, bewildered. 

“Hers too,” the Naruto clone agreed, ignoring the venomous glare suddenly aimed at him by the original Sasuke.

Sakura shook her head, frowning as she continued to examine the copy’s arms. “That... that’s... _seals_. It has to be seals, but I can’t see any.”

“It was very quick,” the original Karin murmured.

“Is something wrong with me?” the Sasuke copy asked, clinging onto Sakura’s arms in fright.

“No, of course not,” Sakura said in her most soothing voice. “You’re perfectly fine now, just gave me a bit of a start, that’s all.”

A sharp whistle cut through the air – the last Naruto shadow clone was back with blankets. Accompanying him was a somber-looking Hinata. The ‘twins’ were nowhere to be seen.

Sakura chewed her lip, wriggling out of the copy’s grasp and standing to approach the Hyuuga heiress. Naruto followed, leaving his shadow clone to distribute the blankets and keep an eye on things. 

“We’ve got company incoming,” Hinata told them quietly. “Shikamaru wants to know if you’re ready to move.”

“How long do we have?” Sakura asked.

“Not very long,” Hinata replied. “We did find a way out. There’s a freight elevator not far from here and they’re planning to collapse that first bottleneck to buy us some more time.”

Sakura cursed under her breath.

“What can I do to help?” Hinata asked, looking at the both of them.

“Naruto, get your clones cracking on the rest of the tanks. Hinata, help me get some more blankets, coats – anything we can use to keep these guys warm,” Sakura said, hurrying forward.

They had bigger things to worry about than seals.

* * *

Shizune frowned as she and Ino examined the not-Sasuke and his companion. There didn’t appear to be anything out of place, which fell in line with Sakura’s field diagnosis, but there was more to it than appearances. Her instinct told her the key was in the lack of scarring.

“What are you looking for, exactly?” Kakashi asked, crossing his arms.

“Evidence of sealing jutsu,” Shizune said, turning over the not-Sasuke’s hands in her own. “There are a few specialized medical seals that can remove scarring or conceal it as a side effect of healing. We don’t normally use those methods because it’s not efficient and the patient would lose calluses that would otherwise help them. The only time we’d use something like that is when a scar is debilitating.”

She paused, raising her hands to feel his forearms. She did not mention the other, more clandestine reason for the seals – Kakashi, undoubtedly, already was well familiar with it as a former ANBU operative and Sai likely was as well. In preparation for deep cover operations, their agents would voluntarily have identifying scars stripped using these seals.

Her thumb brushed over something and she stopped, frowning as she ran her thumb over it again. The skin itself was clear, unblemished, but there was unmistakably the feel of something there. Ah, there it was on the other arm, too. “Ino, check her arms, see if you feel something,” Shizune said.

“Yeah, there’s a slight raised bit,” Ino confirmed, running her thumb over the redheaded girl’s wrist. “It feels almost like it goes around the numbers on one side.”

“Is that bad?” the not-Sasuke worried aloud.

“No, no, that’s good,” Shizune said, smiling at him as she let his arms go. “It’s very good. Ino, would you please go next door and get the black light from the supply tent? We should have at least one left. Be quick about it.”

Ino nodded and darted out the tent quickly.

Not-Sasuke and his companion shifted nervously on their feet, their eyes darting to her and quickly away as if afraid to ask. Both Sai and Kakashi also gave her a curious look.

“If I’m right, the seals should pop up as a discoloration under the light,” Shizune explained. “It may tell us more about what happened to you before Juugo saved you and how we can help.”

“Oh, okay,” the not-Sasuke said, once more assured. He scrunched up his face oddly, pleadingly. “Do you think they did something bad to us there? Is that why we can’t remember?”

Shizune hesitated. Yes, she thought something bad had happened there. That much she was certain of. Whoever was behind the creation of these copies certainly didn’t have good intentions. And yet, she didn’t quite want to admit it, not to these two youths, not yet.

“Karin thinks something bad happened,” the not-Sasuke added, chewing his lip. “Juugo was angry.”

“And sad,” the redheaded girl whispered. Her hand drifted over her heart. “He hurt here.”

Kakashi cleared his throat awkwardly, straightening up and looking away as he said, “He was very worried about the both of you.”

“There was so much red,” the girl admitted, looking down at her now trembling hands, “So much red.”

It was just as Kakashi suspected, Shizune noted: the girl _had_ been the one to see Juugo get injured. The poor thing, it explained so much about her.

“Got it!” Ino shouted, barging back into the tent with a large box. “We lucked out – just one left. All the others got ruined when...”

The blonde trailed off, her gaze drifting down. Then, she inhaled, raising her head and plastering a perky smile on her face as she patted the box. “Well, anyway, here we are!”

“Thank you,” Shizune said, smiling kindly at the girl, and took the box from her. She quickly unpacked the device, plugged it in and wheeled it over. “Kakashi, would you please turn off the lights?”

The copy-ninja complied and the tent was plunged into darkness.

Shizune flicked the switch, the black light hummed on and the world took on a bluish-purple tone.

And right in front of them, the boy who was and was not Sasuke and his redheaded friend were covered, head to toe, in eerily glowing, elegant seals.

“What is this?” not-Sasuke asked, staring at his hands in surprise. A ring of symbols surrounded the numbers on his right wrist, spreading over his hand. “This wasn’t there before.”

“Florescent ink,” Sai breathed, “Certain types would never be visible without the right light. These guys... whoever they are, they didn’t want anyone seeing what they were doing.”

Kakashi nodded in agreement, his white hair practically glowing in the light. He reached out and took the not-Sasuke’s hand in his own, pointing at the design. “This looks like a containment seal.”

“It was probably to prevent this seal from erasing it with the rest of his scars,” Shizune noted, pointing to a seal on the youth’s chest. She then pointed to an identical one on the redheaded girl’s chest. “See? Here it is again. And the same containment seal on the wrist.”

“What does that mean?” not-Sasuke asked, scowling. The seals on his face and forehead distorted oddly with his facial movement, attracting the attention of his companion. She traced his face in awe with her fingers and then touched her own.

“I’m not quite sure,” Shizune admitted, though she had a definite hunch about the ones on their faces. “I’d need to do some research. Could you both please turn around? We’re going to check your backs now.”

Both of the copies turned around, shifting uncomfortably on their feet. Their hands drifted towards each other’s, fingers twining in reassurance.

Shizune narrowed her eyes at the back of the not-Sasuke’s neck and then at his companion’s. She frowned, leaned back, and then leaned in closer, glaring. “Kakashi, what does this seal look like to you?”

Kakashi leaned in, narrowing his good eye at the seal. “I’m no sealing expert, but,” he paused, pointing at one segment of the seal, “This right here looks almost like a conditional clause. I’m guessing it’s linked to the one on her neck, too, am I right?”

Shizune nodded.

“That one’s _heart_ , that one’s _brain_ ,” Ino pointed out, looking over their shoulders. She moved her finger to the other side of the seal. “And this one is for the central nervous system.”

“What does that mean?” not-Sasuke asked, anxiously.

Shizune didn’t answer, her eyes lingering over the ominous seal for _stopped_. “You shouldn’t worry. It looks completely dormant,” she replied, at last.

She had a bad feeling about what it was for.

* * *

He lingered in the shadows, watching his latest pawns with a critical red eye. Things were not going according to plan, but at least he had not lost this one, critical piece. Everything hinged on the youth sulking about on the boxes in this place. The others had all been expendable, even the girl sitting here now, and he hadn’t bothered to look for them. He’d planned for all of them to be killed in the attack anyway, so he wasn’t surprised they weren’t there when he found them in that clearing two days ago. And yet, bizarrely, the boy had managed to hang on to one of them in spite of everything thrown at him.

And, of course, he thought dryly, it _had_ to be the girl.

“Come out, I know you’re there,” the boy said, turning his head to reveal the familiar red of the Sharingan eyes. He paused and, with a vicious smirk, added, “Madara.”

The true founder of Akatsuki practically melted from the shadows, his only visible eye narrowed on the boy.

Across the room, the girl tilted her eyeglasses up on her nose, glaring at him.

“What do you want, old man?” the boy asked. Brazen as brass, that boy.

“I fear you are losing sight of our goal, _Sasuke_ ,” Madara said, gliding further into the room. “You failed me at the summit.”

“Our goal? You set us up,” Sasuke growled. “We barely got out of there with our lives.”

“Ah, but you betrayed me and I _warned_ you what would happen if you betrayed me,” Madara retorted, baring his teeth beneath his mask. “Now, come along. I’ve got a gift for you.”

“Sasuke’s not going anywhere with you, you crusty old ghost,” the girl, Karin, snapped, getting to her feet. “He had a hole the size of a fist in his lung! If I hadn’t stopped the bleeding, we’d both be dead right now! As it was, I nearly died saving his sorry ass because of you!”

“Don’t try my patience, _girl_ ,” Madara snarled, jabbing a finger in her direction. “You are fast outliving your usefulness.”

Sasuke drew his sword. “Don’t you touch her. _I_ decide if she’s useful and _I_ say I still need her.”

Karin nervously swallowed, her eyes darting to the boy.

“Is that so?” Madara asked, coolly. He disappeared and reappeared behind the girl, grabbing her by the throat. “I think you seriously forget who’s in charge here, _boy._ ”

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Sasuke hissed, eyes wide, Sharingan blazing.

“You will come with me now, you’ll finish Danzo, and then you’ll get Itachi’s eyes,” Madara said coldly, tightening his grip until the girl wheezed, gasping for air.

“Let her go and I’ll go with you,” Sasuke said.

He meant it, too, but it wasn’t enough. The boy didn’t need any more distractions.

“You have no further use for her,” Madara said, ramming a kunai through the girl’s back and into her heart, twisting it.

She gasped once and he let her fall, crimson hair mixing with crimson blood. She was dead before she even hit the floor.

_“No!”_ the boy yelled, already launching forward with murder in his eyes.

There was the rage Madara wanted to see.

Suddenly, Sasuke’s head dipped as he pitched forward, his legs crumpling awkwardly beneath him, and he slammed into the floor, face-first. He did not move. He did not even seem to be breathing.

Madara frowned, stalking silently across the room, and crouched in front of the boy. Reaching out, he took the boy’s pulse at the neck – nothing. His scowl deepened immediately and he lifted up the boy’s head by the hair.

Sasuke’s eyes had rolled back into his head, the sockets bloody. Blood trailed from his ears and nose, while white foam leaked heavily from his mouth. His face was frozen somewhere between a snarl and sheer alarm.

Madara cursed, letting the boy’s head fall to the ground with a thud. Half a century of planning gone to waste in a heartbeat. It shouldn’t have happened.

He paused, the edge of something dark under the boy’s collar catching the corner of his eye. He stood sharply, circling the body, and yanked back the collar.

A blackened seal stared back at him.

Madara lunged for the boy’s right arm, yanking back the glove, and then stalked over to the girl’s body, pulling back her right sleeve.

_B2-001_ , the small tattoo on both their arms read.

He cursed. 

He’d been had.

_Someone_ was going to _pay_ for this.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sudden appearance of the elders forces Shizune and Kakashi to act. The retrieval team prepares to evacuate.

“Shizune,” one of the ANBU called from the tent flap. “We have a situation.”

Shizune cursed under her breath. “Be right there,” she called back loudly, turning to Ino. “Ino, Sai – get those two into the back, somewhere out of sight, and _stay there_. Can you do that?”

Both teens nodded.

“Good, good,” she said, mentally steeling herself as she turned towards the tent flap. “Kakashi, with me.”

Outside, Yamato and the ANBU operative were waiting. Kakashi’s visible eye narrowed, darting to the treeline and then back to meet their gaze.

Taking that as his cue, Yamato nodded and made a hand seal for a wood release. The ground rumbled threateningly for a moment before spitting out four perfectly formed wooden walls that enclosed the tent.

“Report,” Shizune ordered.

“The elders are on the move, headed this way,” Yamato said, deadly serious. “Looks like Root figured out we’re hiding something high-priority and tipped them off.”

“As if we didn’t have enough problems,” Kakashi grumbled. “How long?”

“Couple of minutes,” the ANBU supplied.

Shizune shook her head in disbelief. This day just kept getting better and _better_. What happened? Had Tsunade made a bet before the invasion for some lottery that was supposed to be announced today and won?

Kakashi cursed under his breath, balling his hands into fists. “All right. We’ll stall them here as long as we can. Yamato, take Blue Cat and scramble the sanitation team, highest priority. We meet here. _Go._ ”

Yamato and the ANBU operative did not need to be told twice. Both disappeared in a noiseless whirl of smoke. A half a moment later, the four wooden walls began to sink back into the earth.

“They can’t get their hands on those two,” Kakashi said quietly.

Shizune nodded in agreement and put on her sternest I-will-not-budge face.

So much more than mere lives were at stake.

* * *

The whole thing was surreal in a completely mind-numbingly horrific way, Karin decided. It wasn’t like these were bunshin. No, bunshin didn’t feel _alive_ like these did. Not even that Naruto guy’s shadow clones felt completely right. But these things? These things were flesh and blood, real, honest _flesh and blood with pulses and feelings_ , and made her head swim with the echoes of both her and Sasuke’s respective chakra signatures. She could feel them all in her head, scared, confused, cold and unbearably familiar.

It was too much. It made her stomach churn and she dismissed the jutsu, trying to hide a grimace.

“Easy, easy,” one of that Naruto guy’s shadow clones said as he helped one of Sasuke’s copies into some medical scrubs they’d managed to scrounge up. “There you go.”

Another one was helping the copy of herself that had been timed to this copy of Sasuke. Still more of the shadow clones were running around with a disturbing urgency, delivering blankets and clothes to the others and helping them get dressed.

There were so many of _them_.

That was one of the other things that bothered her about this. Sasuke, yes, Karin could understand them wanting to copy him. There was no reason not to. The Sharingan was ridiculously desirable as a bloodline. It made sense for someone to want to preserve that, no matter the cost. But her? No, Karin was no one special, from a ruined, underpowered village. Her most valuable skill was her tracking ability _par excellence_. Her healing ability wasn’t too much to brag about either – convenient, yes, but ultimately inefficient and reliant on maintenance of a base level of chakra to avoid her own death.

But no, they’d copied her, too. One of her for each one of him, paired up in sets like the Ninja Sari and Kento dolls she used to play with as a kid.

And that made no fucking sense.

She couldn’t wrap her head around it. What possible reason could they have to copy her too?

“Karin,” Sasuke muttered, his fingers clenching her arm sluggishly. “We need to get out of here. Can you...?”

His other hand drifted towards his side and she swatted it away, hissing quietly, “My chakra’s still too low.”

Sasuke grumbled incoherently and his head lolled into her shoulder. “They’ll take me back. I’ll go to jail and that’s if I’m _lucky.”_

She sighed, pushing at him a little, until his head rested more comfortably. “Look, we’ll figure something out.”

“Didn’t Naruto say they all smelled the same as us?” he asked, looking at the copies.

“Yes,” she said slowly, realizing. “They won’t be able to track us. Not with all these... well... _us._ They’re us.”

Same chakra, same bodies, same everything: truly them in every sense except memory. In that, they were blank slates just waiting to – _oh no._

“They’re us,” she repeated, horror dawning anew. “Sasuke, they’re _us_.”

He looked at her like she’d just realized something he’d figured out ages ago. “No,” he said, somberly, “They’re not. They’re... I don’t know. They’re just _wrong.”_

“That’s not what I was talking about,” Karin groaned, twisting her sleeves in her hands in frustration. “Sasuke, why would they copy us – you and me in particular – and take away everything that makes us who and what we are? Think about it. What would they have to gain if all we had were our specific abilities and nothing else?”

His brow furrowed as he started to consider. Suddenly, his face drained of color and he looked at her in wide-eyed realization. “No, no, that’s not... you don’t think...?”

“Time to go,” Naruto interrupted, looming over them. “Oi, Sasuke, you don’t look too good.”

“I’m fine,” Sasuke managed, swallowing back whatever he’d been about to say before. “Just... promise me you’ll destroy this place.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Of course,” Naruto said, looking genuinely bewildered. He stooped, holding out a hand. “Now, come on, we gotta go.”

* * *

Shikamaru waited, his eyes fixed on the massive freight elevator. Or, rather, on the hundred and two confused, disoriented teenagers currently gathered on it, under the watchful eyes of Kiba, Akamaru and Chouji. He rolled the cigarette between his fingers. Fifty-one copies each of Sasuke and the girl, Karin, not counting the first two they’d sent back to Konoha. And there, sitting at the edge of the group, were the original two, recognizable only by their clothing.

“We should keep an eye on them,” he said, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Naruto and Sakura.

“I know,” Naruto said.

Sakura nodded in agreement. “That injury will slow him down a bit though, at least until she gets enough chakra back to heal him safely.”

So, they _had_ considered the possibility Sasuke would bolt and prepared for it. Shikamaru sighed – at least it was a little less trouble for him.

“Did you guys find anything when you were looking?” Sakura asked. “Anything at all that could tell us what they were trying to do down here?”

Shikamaru’s mouth went completely dry.

“We didn’t see anything,” Kiba called over his shoulder. He looked back at them. “Just bodies. Whatever they were doing down here, they didn’t keep records.”

“No, no, they wouldn’t,” Sakura agreed, her gaze lowering. “I was sort of hoping I could confirm something, though.”

“Oh?” Shikamaru managed, coughing a little.

“Well, we did notice something a little unusual about the copies – I’d need to get them back to a hospital for some tests to be sure – but I think I might have a theory about why they’re so unlike any ones we’ve seen before,” Sakura hesitated. “It’s a bit out there, mind, and very, very theoretical, but it’s the only logical conclusion based on their particular quirks.”

“And that is?” Shikamaru pressed.

“Give me a couple of minutes to sort it all out,” Sakura said, pinching the bridge of her nose with her forefingers as she swung over the guardrail and landed on the elevator. “I’m still putting it together.”

A loud crack and an ominous rumble suddenly shook the corridor. The lights swayed crazily as Neji, Shino and Rock ran towards them.

“Tenten, Hinata, start it up!” Shikamaru called out, jumping over the guardrail, the others following on his heels. He did a quick visual check, making sure no one was missing, and nodded in the direction of the two girls at the controls.

Tenten threw the next switch.

The freight elevator gave a shuddering lurch and started to slowly climb, dust pouring out of the corridor and into the elevator shaft.

* * *

“There’s nothing here,” Sasuke said, starting to stand.

Suigetsu elbowed him in the head, forcing him back down into the bushes. “Just because you don’t see anything doesn’t mean there isn’t something there, idiot!”

“You know, that can’t be helping his memory loss any,” Karin commented, rolling her eyes.

Suigetsu groaned. “How the hell am I supposed to know that? I’m not a medic!” He paused, glaring at her, and added, “You shouldn’t be giving medical advice anyway – you don’t even know who you are!”

“And who’s fault is that?” she asked.

Suigetsu stopped mid-retort as he realized she was serious. For a moment, it almost felt like the banter they’d had a while ago, before Madara entered the picture and started putting ideas in Sasuke’s stupid fat head. He paused, grunting, and finally said, “Sasuke’s actually.”

“What?” Sasuke practically squeaked, horrified – really, Suigetsu wouldn’t have thought he was even capable of that sound, let alone the ridiculous face he was making. He kind of wished he had a camera.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s your fault,” Suigetsu said, glaring at the large open field in front of them in an attempt to keep a straight face. “And even if it’s not, it should be, since you dragged us to that stupid summit in the first place.”

“But I don’t even remember doing that!” Sasuke protested.

“Probably for the best,” Suigetsu muttered under his breath and then cleared his throat, piping up, “Karin, you sure this is the place?”

She nodded. “I can feel it stronger now. It’s below us.”

“Right,” Suigetsu said, narrowing his eyes at the map and then at the field. “Underground base, which means there’s a hidden door around here.”

The ground suddenly shuddered, a cloud of dust billowing up from the middle of the field.

“What the hell was that?” Sasuke demanded from the ground, his Sharingan already blazing.

Suigetsu frowned, bringing his sword to a more defensive posture. “I think someone’s home.”

Sasuke started getting to his feet.

“Idiot! Stay down!” Suigetsu hissed, grabbing for him. The nimble little bastard avoided his hand and made a beeline straight for Karin. As soon as he saw her face, Suigetsu paled and cursed his own stupidity again.

Karin was shaking, wide-eyed but not seeing, her hands clutching her head in obvious distress.

“Karin, what’s wrong?” Sasuke asked, trying to pull her hands away. He looked back over his shoulder, the number of tomoe in his eyes rapidly increasing. “What’s wrong with her, Suigetsu? What’s happening to her?”

“It’s her ability – _damn it,_ I’m such a stupid shit,” Suigetsu muttered, hurrying over. “She doesn’t remember how to shut it off!”

Belatedly, he realized that meant Sasuke didn’t know how to shut _his_ off either and Sasuke was only getting more agitated. This wasn’t going to end well. If he went to that crazy upgraded eye of his, well... Suigetsu had seen what it did to their enemies and no matter how much Karin annoyed him before all this mess happened, she didn’t deserve to have her brain turned into rice pudding.

“Sasuke, you have Sharingan – do that hypnosis thing! Look in to her eyes and tell her to calm down,” Suigetsu ordered.

“What?” Sasuke sputtered, incredulous. “But... I don’t know how to do that!”

“You don’t have to! Just look in her eyes and tell her what to do,” Suigetsu growled. “She’ll listen. She likes you a lot –a lot more than you know and she’ll probably kill me for telling you when she remembers everything...”

Sasuke blinked in confusion.

Suigetsu groaned, grabbed him and shoved him at Karin. “Never mind that – just... she’ll listen! Stare in her eyes and tell her to focus on you! Hurry up!”

Sasuke nodded, steeling himself as he turned and took a step closer. He then tripped gracelessly over his own foot and landed face-first in her cleavage, sending them both bowling over and knocking the wind out of her as she hit the ground. “Crap, are you okay, Karin?” Sasuke blurted, practically flinging himself back to an upright position and trying to see if she was all right.

Karin blinked for a moment, catching her breath, and then shrieked, her face turning as red as her hair. “Idiot! Get off! Off!”

“I’m trying!” Sasuke managed, tugging at his sleeve as his face turned red as a tomato. “My sleeve’s caught in your zipper!”

Suigetsu sighed, rubbing his forehead. Really, it would be a miracle if they survived this at all, let alone long enough to get the two of them medical attention. He turned away, back towards the field and paused, eyes widening in shock.

“No _fucking_ way,” he breathed.

* * *

“We understand you admitted an unusual patient earlier today,” Homura said, flatly. “One delivered via toad summons, to be specific.”

Blunt and to the point, Shizune noted. Very well, if that was to be the tone the elders were going to take, she could dispense with formalities. “There was a civilian casualty in the pursuit of a certain missing nin. Sakura forwarded him to us for emergency treatment,” she said in her iciest impression of a thoroughly displeased Tsunade.

“Civilian casualties are not our immediate concern – civilian patients should be forwarded to civilian hospitals,” Koharu glared at her.

Shizune frowned, countering archly, “In case you’d failed to notice, we are currently short on both civilian _and_ military medical facilities.”

“It is also our responsibility,” Kakashi added, stepping forward. “The missing nin in question is... _was_ one of ours.”

“We are not responsible for the actions of a madman,” Koharu countered. “Insisting on giving a civilian reparations for such is ridiculous.”

Shizune sighed, already getting frustrated.

“His younger siblings were watching,” Kakashi explained, frowning beneath his mask. “After Danzo’s blunder at the summit, we can’t afford to look bad – especially not to the civilians.”

“True, he has put us in a bit of a bind,” Homura agreed. He then leveled them both with a particularly icy glare. “However, you should have informed us of the situation. An unauthorized civilian-“

“Who was bleeding out from severe abdominal trauma,” Shizune interrupted.

“... _Should not_ have been placed in the same tent as Tsunade,” Homura finished, glaring at her. “It’s a security risk.”

“We’re surrounded by ANBU at all times,” Shizune argued. “They cleared the patient and his siblings when they were brought in to us.”

“The siblings? They were brought as well?” Koharu asked, her voice rising sharply. She glared at Kakashi. “You _should_ know better.”

“They were just little kids,” Kakashi explained, shrugging, “And they just watched their only surviving family member practically get cut in half. You try explaining that to a child.”

The elders exchanged a pointed look and then Homura sighed, relaxing a little. “Very well. How long will they be here?”

Shizune took a deep breath. “The patient is resting in stable condition. It’ll be some time before he regains consciousness.”

“We’d like to speak to his siblings,” Koharu said. “They need to be made aware of certain protocols.”

Kakashi didn’t move and Shizune resisted the urge to flinch as she pasted on a thin smile: “I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s a good idea right now. They’ve been through an awful lot.”

“It’ll just be for a moment,” Koharu insisted, edging closer. “We’ll go over the protocols and leave.”

“No, no, it’s really not necessary,” Shizune protested. “I’ll go over it with them when their brother is awake and ready to be discharged.”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to keep us from seeing them for some reason, Shizune,” Homura observed, glaring at her. “Is there something we should know about your patient and his siblings?”

Shizune shook her head. “No, no, it’s not that! It’s just, they’re _young_ and _scared_ enough as it is!”

The elders gave her a look that plainly said they didn’t believe a word she’d just said and then started for the tent flap.

“I really don’t think you should go in there!” Shizune protested, trying to block them with her body. “They’re resting!”

“You forget your place,” Koharu said, acidly, and elbowed her way past her.

Shizune followed, stomach churning with anxiety. The tent was thankfully empty, equipment off, and only the two curtained off partitions visible. Good, she thought, nodding at Kakashi: they’d bought Ino and Sai enough time to hide.

“Over here, correct?” Koharu asked, indicating the partition to the right. She didn’t wait for confirmation, pulling the curtain back with one tug.

An empty gurney, several operating lamps, medical equipment and some blood spatter was all that remained.

“Where is your patient?” Koharu demanded, rounding on them.

That was the certainly the question of the hour, Shizune thought. She swallowed nervously. They couldn’t have gone very far, not with an unconscious man of Juugo’s size, which meant... Her eyes flicked to Tsunade’s bed, hidden behind the second partition. There was a large headboard on it, just big enough that someone could hide behind it if they kept low enough.

Koharu frowned, following her gaze, and reached for the second curtain.

Shizune resisted the urge to curse.

They’d need a miracle to get out of this one. There was seriously no way anyone would believe Sasuke Uchiha and his redheaded friend weren’t there to do any harm, much less that they had no memories of anything they’d done.

 _“Shizune!_ What’s all that fucking noise?”

Shizune’s eyes widened, her jaw dropping as she looked back at Kakashi. That voice! She darted forward, scooping up her stethoscope, and drew back the curtain.

Tsunade was sitting up, her genjutsu already back in place, and she had a surly scowl on her face that deepened as soon as she saw the two elders. “What the hell’s going on out there?”

“I’m terribly sorry, Tsunade,” Shizune said, eyes watering with relief. “I tried to tell them to leave.”

Homura placed a hand on Koharu’s shoulder and steered her away. “We’ll inform the ANBU and the Fire Lord of Lady Tsunade’s recovery.”

His tone clearly said that the matter hadn’t been forgotten, but merely put on hold.

Tsunade waited until they’d exited the tent completely before leveling Shizune and Kakashi with a severe glance. “Would anyone care to explain to me _why_ Sasuke Uchiha and two of his teammates are hiding behind my bed?”

Kakashi and Shizune exchanged a look.

“It’s a long story,” Kakashi said.


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsunade returns. Sakura shares her conclusions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for reference to brainwashing, body horror, medical experimentation and copious amounts of technobabble.

Tsunade narrowed her eyes at the seals, radiant under the black light, and traced her finger contemplatively over one or two here and there. She then clicked off the lamp, nodding as she stepped back from the copied teens. “You can put on your shirts, now.”

Not-Sasuke and his companion wordlessly complied, slowly turning around to face her.

“Those seals,” Tsunade paused, frowning. “Whoever did these was either a genius or completely _insane_.”

“So, you’re familiar with these seals?” Sai wondered aloud, both eyes widening in surprise even as Ino elbowed him in the ribs.

Tsunade harrumphed, crossing her arms. “Of course I am.”

Really, Ino thought, that boy should know better. This was the legendary Lady Tsunade!

“Is it bad?” Juugo slurred, wincing a little as he shifted in his chair. They’d woken him while trying to move him from the gurney, but he’d been so out of it, it’d been like moving a giant rag doll. He’d sat through the whole story and the revelation regarding the hundred or so others with the type of calm one only gets by being so thoroughly messed up that any further shocks to the system just aren’t getting through. On the good side though, the man looked a lot less like death warmed over now that he had some color back.

Not-Sasuke rubbed his arm, fidgeting nervously, and then let his hand fall, his fingers automatically threading between not-Karin’s fingers. It was almost like they were magnetically attracted or something. Then again, Ino supposed it did sort of make sense: if she’d been in their shoes, she wouldn’t have wanted to be separated from the only person she really knew either.

“You could say that,” Tsunade said dryly. “Most of the seals are pretty simple – a larger seal to cover up the scars the two of you would have normally, chakra suppressors keyed to adrenaline, and that that kind of thing.”

She paused, shot a look at both Kakashi and Shizune, and added, “Then there are the other ones.”

Not-Karin squeezed not-Sasuke’s hand as she looked to him. He nodded, patting their intertwined hands gently to assure her. Ino resisted the urge to say something about how cute it was – this was not the time or place to say anything.

“Several of the ones on your faces affect memory centers in the brain,” Tsunade explained. “It looks like they were trying to cut off your memories without destroying your abilities to understand speech.”

“That’s right,” not-Sasuke said quietly. “I remember. They kept showing us pictures of things, asking if we knew what they were.”

“What about their memories? Can they get them back?” Juugo asked.

Tsunade shook her head. “No, it’s not likely. What they did with these seals was effectively induce psychogenic amnesia. The few cases we’ve seen with that diagnosis haven’t been met with a lot of success in recovering anything more than fragments. And because it’s induced artificially, I’ll need to do more testing to see if there’s any serious damage to their ability to form and retain long-term memories. But that’s hardly the worst seal on there.”

Both copied teens paled.

“Are any of you familiar with the concept of a dead man’s switch?” Tsunade asked, scanning the room.

Neither Shizune nor Kakashi looked terribly surprised and Ino couldn’t say she was that surprised either, if Tsunade was talking about the seal on the back of their necks. Seals like that, involving those systems and organs, weren’t good news. The copied teens and Juugo looked a bit lost, though, and Ino discreetly elbowed Sai in the ribs, quickly quirking her head in their direction.

Sai cleared his throat, turning to address the three: “It’s a form of a fail safe, meant to stop something in the event the operator is incapacitated.”

“Correct,” Tsunade said, crossing her arms over her chest, and looked back to the copied teens. “The seal on the back of your neck is a dead man’s switch, with one purpose.”

She paused and pointed at not-Sasuke: “To kill you in the event of her death.”

“What - why? I don’t understand,” the copied boy breathed in horror. 

His redheaded companion clung to his arm in wide-eyed disbelief, shaking her head, and Ino could swear she was murmuring that it couldn’t be true.

“You were probably meant to be used as weapons,” Kakashi piped up, deadly serious, “I doubt they wanted ones that would be easy to capture. Doubly so, since you have the Sharingan eyes.”

There was another reason, too, a less savory one that undoubtedly would have been more necessary in the case of the original Sasuke. The seal ensured he’d protect Karin, even if only to protect his own life. But without memories, they didn’t need to be threatened or bribed. All they needed was to be retrained and aimed in the right direction by their handlers.

Ino shuddered in disgust at the thought of it.

“The one good thing those sadists did was add another seal to it,” Tsunade harrumphed, glaring at the copied boy. “A sort of vigilance seal, a really subtle one. It connects you to her empathically at a subconscious level. You probably haven’t even noticed, but you’ve been reacting to her emotions.”

She pointed at their entwined hands and both copied teens looked down, as if noticing for the first time. Immediately, they let go, as though burned.

“Can the seals be removed?” not-Karin asked, one hand drifting to the back of her neck.

“No,” Tsunade said, shaking her head. “And no sane medical ninja or sealing specialist would try to take them off either. It’s far too risky. The location and targets of the seals mean one misstep and both of you could either die or end up brain dead.”

“So, I don’t have a choice about staying with her, do I?” not-Sasuke murmured, looking thoroughly ill.

Ino wanted to hit him for saying that as she saw the hurt flash across the redhead’s face, but then she saw the way he stiffened and looked even greener. The poor bastard already knew.

“If she’s in danger, yeah, you’d probably have a gut feeling about it and come running,” Tsunade agreed. She then snorted, shaking her head, and joked, “You know, most men would kill to know what their woman is feeling. You can actually do it.”

Kakashi made a funny choking noise as the copies, Shizune and Ino gaped in horror at the Fifth Hokage.

Sai raised his eyebrows, opened his mouth, and promptly proceeded to make it worse: “The se-“

Ino slapped her hand over his mouth and stomped on his foot for good measure.

Juugo laughed a little, wincing, and shook his head, smiling.

“It’s not funny!” not-Sasuke protested, pouting.

“A little bit,” Juugo admitted. “It’s sort of ironic, actually. And if Suigetsu were here, he’d agree with me.”

Not-Sasuke donned a completely petulant expression, stubbornly crossing his arms.

“It’s because I can feel him, right?” not-Karin piped up, her fingers drifting over her heart. “That warmth...”

Juugo smiled at her. “A seal can’t tell you how you feel. I believe you remember somewhere, even just a little, that you cared for him, just as he must remember somewhere that he needed you.”

Not-Sasuke visibly bristled, huffing as he turned away to hide the spots of color high on his cheeks. Meanwhile, not-Karin smiled softly, mouthing her gratitude.

Ino’s eyes widened – oh dear, that would explain why they set it up that way, actually. They couldn’t force something that didn’t exist, but they could _reinforce_ something that already existed. It was very, very cruel the way these two – and probably all the others – had been toyed with and Ino wished she could do something to hurt the people who did this to them.

It just wasn’t right.

“Well,” Tsunade said, pulling over a chair and sitting down. “This brings us to our next point.”

Kakashi cleared his throat, leaning forward. “The base needs to be destroyed.”

“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Tsunade said, raising her hand. “The more pressing concern is what to do with the copies. We can’t bring them back here. The alliance has put all eyes on us. Our standing with Cloud is already shaky enough as-is. If we’re caught with them, it’ll look like we’ve been in bed with the Akatsuki the whole time. Not only will we lose support of the alliance, the other nations _will_ go to war with us and we can’t afford to be fighting a war on two fronts, not now, not if what you say about Madara is true.”

Shizune nodded, adding, “Not to mention, there’s no real places left we could hide them after Pain’s attack, even if it were possible.”

“And then there’s the matter of the ones here and the originals,” Kakashi sighed.

Juugo noticeably tensed and both copied teens turned worried gazes on the Fifth Hokage.

Tsunade leaned back, her fingers pressed together. “There’s no avoiding it – the originals will have to be arrested.”

“No,” Juugo protested sharply. “You _can’t_. It wasn’t their fault. Madara blackmailed us!”

“I’m sorry, but our hands are tied on this one,” Tsunade said, frowning. “And, by all rights, I should have the ANBU turn you over, too. As much as Madara is known for his ability to screw with minds, the fact remains that Sasuke led your team in an assault on the kage summit and attacked the leaders of the five nations. The most we can hope for is to petition to retain control of the trial, keep it here where we’ll have a more sympathetic crowd and hope that we can prevent him from being executed or, worse, extradited to a nation that’s not as sympathetic.”

“And Cloud is going to fight us tooth and nail the whole way,” Kakashi agreed. “They want Sasuke’s head on a platter.”

“It’s not right,” Juugo complained.

“Nothing about this is _right_ ,” Tsunade sighed, “But we’re just going to have to try our best to sort this out.”

There was a moment of awkward silence.

“Kakashi, take the sanitation team and head back,” Tsunade ordered firmly. “As soon as the base is destroyed, have each member of the sanitation team take a pair of the copies and relocate them throughout the country. They are to teach them how to take care of themselves, return here, and then forget where they left them. I don’t want to know. I don’t want it in any of the mission reports. As far as I am concerned, knowledge of their existence is a triple S-ranked secret and that base never existed. Go, _now_.”

Kakashi bowed stiffly, turning on his heels and exited the tent.

“Now, for you three,” Tsunade said, sighing as she pressed her fingers together again. “What shall I do with you?”

“I’d like to stay with these two, if I can,” Juugo replied.

The two copied teens gave each other an awkward look and then slowly smiled at each other.

“We’d like to stay with Juugo,” not-Sasuke said, finally.

Tsunade harrumphed and leveled a critical eye at the orange-haired man. “You, you’re the source of the curse seal enzyme, are you not?”

Juugo stiffened for a moment and then hesitantly nodded in the affirmative.

Tsunade gave a long-suffering sigh. “Well, I suppose we might as well have a look at you. I’ll bet you’ve never had a proper examination by a _sane_ medical nin. That idiot Orochimaru probably had you on the complete wrong treatment.”

She paused, looking over her shoulder: “Shizune, run and see if the old South Palace safe house is still intact. It’s about time _someone_ got use out of that heap.”

“Right!” Shizune beamed, quickly turning and leaving.

Juugo just stared, blinking.

“Don’t thank me, idiot,” Tsunade grumbled, waving her hand dismissively. “You’re a material witness. Naruto will need you to help bail that idiot Sasuke out of the hole he’s dug himself into. And those two idiots _still_ need more medical testing – not to mention some names, real, _proper_ names! Can’t run around calling them Sasuke and Karin Zero-Zero-Three, can we?”

Ino couldn’t help giggling at the faces the two copied teens made.

* * *

The sky was drawing ever closer as the freight elevator rose and, with it, a rush of fresh air. One hundred and two sets of eyes were seeing it for the first time. It was almost amusing in a way to watch the copies staring up at the sky in confusion and utter bewilderment. More than one got to their feet, reaching curiously for the ephemeral blue.

“What do you think’s going to happen to all of them?” Naruto asked, crossing his arms.

“Don’t know,” Shikamaru said honestly. “We’ll just have to wait for Kakashi and Yamato to get back.”

The unspoken ‘hopefully, they will not all be killed’ hung in the air between them with leaden seriousness.

“Naruto,” Shikamaru paused, looking down, “You know what’s going to happen to Sasuke when we get back, right?”

The blond sighed, shaking his head. “It’s not over yet. We now know Madara’s pulling the strings. If we can _prove_ Madara’s been messing with Sasuke’s head –“

“Naruto, what if we _can’t?”_ Shikamaru asked, bluntly. “You’ve seen Sasuke. Does he look crazy to you, right now?”

“No, he was a little confused and pretty upset about the whole... well, copy business – who wouldn’t be – but he seems pretty normal now. From what I heard happened at the summit, it was like he was a whole other person!” Naruto protested. “Think about it, Madara could have had him under some kind of mind control jutsu the entire time. That guy’s crazy powerful! Who knows what sort of stuff he’s got up his sleeve?”

Shikamaru sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Look, Naruto, I know you want Sasuke to be okay and come back, but it might not be possible anymore. You have to understand that when we take him back, he _is_ going to have to answer for what he’s done and we can’t change that. Willing or not, he stepped on that path and he has to pay the price.”

Naruto shook his head. He knew that, he did, and yet... He was not ready to give up on his first real friend yet. Not now, not when they were so close to succeeding.

Hell, that idiot even had something to live for with all these copies of him.

“Just promise me this, Naruto,” Shikamaru said, sighing again. “Promise me that when the time comes, you won’t interfere with what needs to be done.”

“I can’t,” Naruto said, shaking his head as he started to walk away. “I just can’t.”

His feet wandered to where the original Sasuke was standing and leaning against his redheaded companion almost automatically.

“Discussing my inevitable fate, were we?” Sasuke curled his lip in a sneer as he made a sign for Karin to be quiet.

She made a face at them, but complied.

Naruto sighed, looking away. “Don’t say it like that. There’s still a chance for you as long as they think you were under Madara’s control.”

“And what if I wasn’t?” Sasuke asked, quirking an eyebrow. “What then, idiot?”

Naruto clenched his hands into fists. “Don’t say shit like that. You’re not like that.”

“How do you know?” Sasuke asked, looking up at the steadily growing sky. “You haven’t seen me in years and the only reason I haven’t bolted yet is because of this gaping hole in my side.”

Sasuke paused, snorting, “Besides, what do I have to look forward to when I get there? A village of people happy at the expense of my family’s lives, who asked my brother to do the unthinkable, and my own special place on the chopping block?”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Naruto said, frowning. “Look around you! All these guys... they’re your blood. You could live for them. They _need_ you!”

Sasuke lunged forward to punch him, even as Karin cried out and tried to hold him back, and hissed, “Just because they’re me, doesn’t mean they’re my family, you dumb fuck!”

Naruto stumbled back, wiping the back of his hand across his lips. “They could be, if you just fucking tried, asshole.”

“I can’t believe you! I lost my _family_ , my whole clan!” Sasuke raged. “And you want me to _replace_ them with a bunch of mentally crippled copies of myself?”

“That’s not what...” Naruto began, grinding his teeth. The temptation to hit back was growing stronger.

“Stop it,” Karin interrupted, moving to stand between the two of them. “Back off, _now_ , before the two of you do something you’ll both regret.”

Naruto glared, his eyes flicking to her and then back. With a snort, he took a step back, letting his hands fall loosely at his sides.

Sasuke grunted, wincing a little as he leaned on Karin’s arm. He waved his hand at her, indicating he was okay, and then shook his head, cursing under his breath. “Do me a favor. Adopt one of those copies. Turn him into the friend you always wanted and let me go to my execution in peace and fucking quiet.”

“I’m not giving up on you,” Naruto said, recognizing a dismissal when he heard it.

“You’re a complete fucking idiot,” Sasuke said, turning away.

Naruto shook his head and looked up into the sky as the elevator finished its ascent and locked into place with a heavy, hydraulic thud.

A completely shocked and incredulous voice broke through the silence: “No _fucking_ way!”

Sasuke started, immediately whipping his head in the direction of the voice. “Suigetsu?”

A pale haired teen, matching the description of Sasuke’s other teammate, the swordsman Suigetsu, stared at them from the bushes, completely slack-jawed.

“Where the hell have you been?” Karin fumed.

“Suigetsu, what’s going...” a familiar male voice asked.

They watched in mute shock as Sasuke Uchiha emerged from the brush behind the swordsman, followed by the all-too familiar form of Karin. Both were dressed as they had been at the summit, though it looked like they’d recently been engaged in a fight.

On seeing everyone standing stock still on the field, this Sasuke’s words trailed off, his face suddenly pale.

“...I _told_ you it felt familiar,” the newest Karin said, adjusting her glasses.

* * *

This had to be the single most mind-bending, awkward event Suigetsu had ever had the misfortune of being involved in. His only real consolation was that he wasn’t alone in his suffering: _everyone_ looked just as confused and unsettled as he felt.

“You know who I am?” he asked, pointing to the Sasuke in the group who’d called his name, the only one dressed the same as... well, Sasuke. “Prove it!”

Said Sasuke scowled, giving him a look that plainly said he was asking a stupid question and getting on the Uchiha’s normally paper-thin nerves. Meanwhile, the Karin said Sasuke was leaning on glared acidly at Suigetsu and said, “You’re a dick.”

Yep, that was _definitely_ them.

So... who the hell had he rescued, then?

“Okay,” Suigetsu breathed, scanning the crowd. “Wow, you’ve been busy.”

The other Sasuke’s glare turned withering.

A hand tugged on his arm, the Sasuke he’d been traveling with staring at him, clearly shaken. “Suigetsu, why do they look like us? Who are they?”

“I’m Sasuke Uchiha,” the other Sasuke stated coldly. “And this is Karin. We were Suigetsu’s teammates, along with Juugo.”

“But... I thought _we_ were...” Sasuke murmured, looking back and forth between them and Suigetsu. “You said... I... I don’t understand!”

“Calm down!” Suigetsu barked right in his face, resisting the twinge of guilt that flashed through him when the teen jumped back in fright. He then turned back to the crowd. “Someone _will_ tell me what the fuck is going on here!”

This was insane.

One of the Leaf ninja, a blond in orange and black, cleared his throat and approached Suigetsu. He kept his hands visible, making it blatantly obvious that he wasn’t interested in a fight. “It’s complicated,” he said, and looked back over his shoulder. “Sasuke, Karin, Sakura, come and join us for a second.”

He turned back, a sheepish expression on his face, and added, “Sakura can explain it better than me.”

Suigetsu let them come to him, discreetly observing the other Sasuke and Karin’s state. It was clear the other Sasuke was injured and by the way he was favoring one side, it seemed like the wound from before they’d been separated. The other Karin seemed to be holding it together, but only just. Her chakra was likely still very, very low. Both the other Sasuke and Karin looked like they’d had one hell of a shock and Suigetsu didn’t need to ask what it was – that much was pretty obvious.

The two he’d arrived with didn’t look like they were taking it much better.

“I’m Sakura, I’m a medical ninja,” the pink-haired Leaf ninja said, approaching the group – again with hands visible to show she meant no harm. “I’ll try to keep this as simple and brief as possible.”

She paused, taking a moment to think, and then continued, “Earlier today, we found your teammate Juugo in a clearing. He was severely injured and traveling with what we assumed were the original Sasuke and Karin. We assumed something had been done to them, so we sent all three back to Konoha for treatment and retraced Juugo’s steps. It led us to an underground facility, where we discovered all these copies you see behind us and what appeared to be the actual originals.”

“Appeared to be?” the other Sasuke asked, his eyes narrowing sharply.

Sakura hesitated: “Give me a second.”

Suigetsu may not have been a genius or have been capable of reading people’s feelings, but he had this gut sense that whatever she was about to say, the other Sasuke wouldn’t like it. The Leaf ninja in the orange looked like he had the same feeling and had changed his stance to effectively get to her faster.

“The copies we’ve seen so far have similar features,” Sakura explained. “They lacked scar tissue and weapon calluses and their chakra has been moderately suppressed, but otherwise they are in very good health. They do, however, lack memories. They seem to recall and understand words just fine, but they really don’t have any memories of people or places.”

Both the Sasuke and Karin that Suigetsu had been traveling with stiffened, exchanging a frightened look. They hadn’t remembered anything at all, but they’d been able to speak just fine. The thing was that they definitely both had scars and calluses. He’d seen them when he’d rescued them from that fat merchant in town. The only thing really weird with them was that they’d lost their memories. Other than that, they were almost normal.

Actually, in many ways, they were an _improvement_ to normal, in spite of being hopelessly screwed up.

“Something else couldn’t cause that?” Suigetsu asked, crossing his arms over his chest. Seeing them wigged out was getting to him a little.

“Emotional trauma, maybe,” Sakura admitted, “It could trigger a form of stress-related amnesia, but for two people to get it at the exact same time? And it wouldn’t explain any of the other things going on.”

She paused again, turning to the pair Suigetsu had found. “There is another distinguishing feature of the copies. Each one bears a sequenced serial number on the right wrist. May I please see your right wrists?”

Karin blinked, raising her right arm to look at it as if for the first time. Next to her, Sasuke did the same.

“It’s okay,” Sakura said gently, reaching out to catch Karin’s hand. She gently rolled up the redhead’s sleeve and then turned to Sasuke, pulling back his armguard.

Printed in small, precise, black digits on both of their wrists was _B2-002._

So it was true, Suigetsu noted, a little disappointed.

“We’re... fakes?” Karin managed shakily, staring at the damning mark.

“Not necessarily,” Sakura said, her face somber.

The other Sasuke frowned, his eyes narrowing, and the Karin next to him shifted uncomfortably.

“In cloning experiments, cells are cultivated and the cloned organism grows at a normal rate. They aren’t the same as their originals. All kinds of differences pop up due to phenotype expression, environment, diet, and all kinds of variables,” Sakura added. She licked her lips nervously and threaded her fingers together, continuing: “But you... You’re identical. You have the same build and muscle mass, same features, even the same haircut, things traditional cloning can’t reproduce! The changes are only made _afterwards_ , most likely through extensive seals. This means – and, mind you, it’s just a theory – that you’re not clones as we understand it. It’s more like you’re duplicated matter.”

“I don’t understand,” Sasuke managed, now clutching at his wrist. “Are we fakes or not?”

“That’s the thing: if all of you really are matter duplicates, then _none_ of you are fakes. Moreover, it means that if the duplication process was interrupted early enough, it would be impossible to distinguish the duplicates from the originals,” Sakura paused, turning to the other Sasuke and Karin. “May I see your right wrists please?”

Suigetsu gaped.

Oh yeah, this was not going to end well.

The other Karin raised her arm, staring at it in shock, while the other Sasuke shook his head.

“No,” he said, still shaking his head. He pushed the other Karin’s hand down. “No, no... I know who we are. We’re not... We’re _not.”_

“Sasuke, you were there,” Sakura stated matter-of-factly. “You saw it. All the copies started out with their memories and scars intact. If Juugo interrupted the process in the _first_ stage, before the seals were applied...“

“No!” the other Sasuke cut her off, turning away. He started to head for the trees, half-dragging the shell-shocked other Karin with him.

The blond Leaf ninja started to follow, but Sakura put a hand on his arm and quietly said, “Naruto, give him some space. He won’t go far. Not with that wound.”

The blond, Naruto, gave her a stormy look, but acquiesced.

An awkward silence descended.

“What will happen to us?” Karin asked. Her thumb absently rubbed at the numbers on her wrist.

Naruto fidgeted and stated honestly, “We don’t know.”

A second, longer and even more uncomfortable silence followed.

“Who are we if we aren’t Sasuke and Karin?” Sasuke asked, looking up at them with a thoroughly lost expression.

The two Leaf ninja seemed at a complete loss for words and, to his disgust, so was Suigetsu, although he couldn’t fathom why.

It should be simple enough. The other Sasuke and Karin were definitely the real deal – there was no mistaking his cocky, cold brat attitude or her hate of him and cling-to-Sasuke nature. Sasuke’s wounds and Karin’s low chakra were pretty close to what Suigetsu remembered from before they were separated from him and Juugo. And that Sasuke probably hoped he’d follow him again, back to Madara for another whack at that Danzo guy.

Except, Suigetsu thought sourly, that’s how they got in this whole mess in the first place. Sasuke had gone crazy, taken Karin, left them to fend for themselves, and she ended up carrying him back to them when he got his ass handed to him.

And that’s what it would be all over again with them, except maybe next time, Suigetsu and Karin would both lose their lives.

The other two didn’t have their memories and were about as good for his extended life as turning into the water on the women’s side of a public bath – _good times, good times_ ¬. They were clumsy, needed to be completely retrained as ninja, and were lucky they even could find the right end of a kunai. They were stupidly hopeful in spite of their ignorance, asked too many questions, and threatened to drive him completely insane.

Yet, he liked them and actually felt pretty bad for them right now, which didn’t make any sense at all. They must have actually succeeded in driving him insane.

That had to be it, because otherwise he was going soft and Mist ninja do not go soft.

“Fuck it,” Suigetsu murmured under his breath, turning to his Sasuke and Karin. “What the hell are you talking about, you idiots! You _are_ Sasuke and Karin! As if I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference... And quit moping! We still have to get Juugo!”

The two of them stared at him in shock and then both slowly started to smile.

Suigetsu inwardly cursed.

He was so going soft.

* * *

There was a crack of displaced air as Kakashi and Yamato appeared in front of Shikamaru with fifty cloaked ANBU.

“You’re late,” Shikamaru said dryly.

Kakashi smiled behind his mask. “And a good thing, too, since you’ve relocated. I gather things below got a little crowded?”

“You could say that,” Shikamaru agreed. “As far as the Hyuuga can tell, they’re still down there. Seems that when we collapsed the bottleneck, they figured structural integrity was compromised and aren’t going to move until they’ve verified its all go.”

Kakashi nodded absently, as if he’d expected that’s how it would go from the start.

“Do we have any new orders? Say, about them?” Shikamaru asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder.

“For now, we need you to move them over there,” Yamato said, indicating the line of trees and brush to the east. “We’re going to cave the whole thing in.”

Shikamaru nodded, making a hand sign to the others to move towards the trees. Within a few seconds, he heard Kiba, Lee and Chouji calling out, asking the copies to head towards the tree line.

Kakashi made a signal of his own and both Yamato and the ANBU disappeared, scattering in all directions. “As to our other orders,” he paused, “The original two are to be arrested and returned to Konoha. How many of the copies did Sakura manage to wake?”

“All of them, for a total of a hundred and two, if we include the four that were already up,” Shikamaru replied. “Two more also popped up with Sasuke’s other teammate, the swordsman. They were dressed like the originals, but they were missing their memories, as far as I could gather from the shouting.”

“Sounds like someone wanted to keep people from figuring out where the originals were,” Kakashi observed. “It makes me wonder if there isn’t another set out there somewhere.”

It was definitely a possibility. According to Naruto, the last pair they’d pulled out of the tanks was numbered B2-054. Shikamaru didn’t know the numbers on the two new ones that had appeared or those first two they found, but he knew the ones they’d found wandering down there before they started waking the others up had the numbers B2-004 and B2-005 respectively. That left about three sets and, provided the other two sets had the missing numbers, then that meant there was at least one final set missing.

How troublesome, he thought. “What’s going to happen to them?”

“The sanitation team will relocate them to safe houses across the nation and then from there, they’ll be integrated into the civilian population,” Kakashi paused, starting to walk towards the tree line. “It’s the best way.”

Shikamaru nodded, following. It was really the best they could hope for in this situation.

A series of explosions ripped through the air from the south, large plumes of dirt and brush flying into the air. He could hear the copies start to panic and the voices of his teammates trying to calm them down and assure them everything was all right, even as the explosions got closer and closer.

“Where are the originals, by the way?” Kakashi asked, scanning the crowd.

Shikamaru resisted the urge to curse as he started looking for Naruto.

The blond had his back to them and was observing Sakura, who appeared to be doing a brief medical check on the two newest copies.

“Naruto!” Shikamaru shouted, “The originals!”

Naruto turned, paled, and suddenly raced off into the trees.

* * *

Now well into the woods, Sasuke let go of Karin and dragged himself to a stump. He sat, breaths coming in big, ragged gulps of air that made the hole in his side hurt. His face was wet and, dimly, he realized he was crying, though he wasn’t sure whether it was from the pain or just the sheer concept of that _impossible_ thing.

He knew who he was.

He _remembered._

Meals with his family, Itachi sneaking dango before supper and making him promise not to tell – _our secret, little brother_ -, the way their mother smelled of laundry and spices and _home-safety-love you_ , the way the fireball rolled off his lips that first time and spat through the air in a beautiful oily blast, his father’s pen scratching across the police reports and everything Uchiha, everything ruined. The horror and confusion of _that_ night, the way Naruto grated on his every nerve and Sakura was so stupidly focused on love that he was always wondering when she’d get herself killed, bruised knuckles, oh god, sand, he hated sand so much but he can melt it all to glass now with Ameratsu. Orochimaru thought he had him, but he had a plan and that old snake would never see it coming. He brought down Deidara and Orochimaru and this idiot host wanted to rap? Rage, rage, burning against that name, the man who did this to his brother and he was losing too much blood, Karin was carrying him, and then there were trees...

Surely, if he remembered these things, that meant Sakura was wrong.

Because he couldn’t be a copy.

He _couldn’t_ be.

His eyes drifted to his right wrist, covered by the armguard.

There wasn’t going to be anything there. He didn’t remember there being anything there because he was the original, so it shouldn’t be necessary to look.

And yet...

He raised his left hand and reached for the edge of the armguard, distantly aware that Karin was watching him closely. His fingers caught the edge of the cloth and he stopped.

_“If Juugo interrupted the process in the first stage, before the seals were applied...“_

His hand shook.

“There you are,” Madara’s voice cut through the air. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Sasuke turned his head, just in time to see the orange-masked figure materialize. “We ran into a bit of a problem.”

“I noticed,” Madara said dryly. “Quite the little dilemma the Leaf has there. Dealing with those replicas will keep them busy for a while.”

“You knew about it?” Sasuke asked, glaring at him. He wouldn’t put it past the old lunatic. He seemed to have information about, if not a hand in, a lot of things.

“Matter replication, the creation of a _flawless_ copy, identical in every way,” the masked man said, almost reverently. “When Orochimaru fled Konoha, he left behind many notes, particularly on cloning theory. Danzo managed to obtain some of them. He then sold them to private civilian interests to fund his little operations, one of which used the notes to develop the basis of matter replication. Obviously, the military applications of such a discovery were endless. Danzo wasted no time in funding more research. He even got Orochimaru to contribute as part of their little exchange of services.”

Madara paused, glancing at Sasuke. “Do you remember when Danzo said that knowing where he got those eyes would only anger you?”

Sasuke stared. He’d assumed they were from the corpses of his kinsmen.

“B2,” Karin whispered, horror dawning on her face. “ _B2. Batch_ two.”

“They were...?” Sasuke murmured, paling as he looked from her to Madara.

His eyes.

His eyes in that bastard’s arm.

Bile rose in his throat.

“Your first few months of training with Orochimaru were brutal,” Madara added. “They transported you when you were unconscious, replicated you, and had you back before anyone was the wiser.”

He’d been knocked out a fair number of times during those first few months and was out sometimes for hours on end. He could almost see himself waking up in that facility like the others had done, naked and disoriented, but so much younger: twelve instead of sixteen, weaker, stupider. And while every time he’d woken up and went back to training, those ones had woken up only to be murdered for their eyes.

Sasuke growled, choking down the urge to vomit, and clenched his hands into fists. Death was too good for that bastard, far too good.

“I am going to flay that bastard alive and feed his body to the crows in pieces!” he spat.

A series of explosions started to sound from the south, drawing closer.

“As you wish,” Madara said and he sounded almost disturbingly gleeful. “I can take you right to him. Shall we go?”

Sasuke nodded, wincing as he stood.

“He’s going to need to rest up a bit first,” Karin said, hesitantly approaching Sasuke and letting him lean on her arm. “It’ll take me a few more hours to regenerate enough chakra to safely heal that wound and have enough left for combat.”

“Of course,” Madara said. His eyes slid from Sasuke to Karin and back as he held out a hand. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. Such a useful girl you have, Sasuke.”

Sasuke resisted the urge to shudder as he took the masked man’s hand. Something about that knowing tone made his skin crawl.

“Sasuke!” Naruto shouted from somewhere nearby, too late.

And then they were gone.


	10. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fifteen years later...
> 
> Warning: character death, violence.

_15 years later..._

The farm at the end of the dirt road was small, sitting near the crest of a gently rolling hill. A tiny single-level house and small barn capped the hill overlooking the field. There was one farmer working the field, a man in shabby coveralls and a beat up hat, with long, dark hair tied in a messy ponytail. Barely visible in the window of the house was the silhouette of a woman.

The farmer paused in his work, wiping the sweat from his face with a rag. His dark eyes drifted across the field and suddenly stopped, fixed on the figure in a black, hooded cloak standing on the other side of the fence.

“Can I help you, stranger?” he asked, approaching the fence. “You lost?”

The cloaked figure shook its head and held up a pair of photographs in his right hand. “Have you seen these two?”

The voice was young, male – probably a teenager, no older than the dark-haired boy and redheaded girl in the photographs.

“Not sure I can help you there, kid,” the farmer said with a sniff as he looked away. “We don’t see many folks out here. You might have better luck in town.”

The cloaked figure silently looked at photos in his hand and then shoved his whole arm forward, photos extended. “Maybe it would help if you took a closer look?”

 _B3-116_ glared up from the cloaked figure’s exposed wrist.

The farmer hesitated a moment and then reached out to take the photos with his right hand, the faded numbers _B2-012_ visible. He looked at the photographs for a few moments and then raised his eyes to stare into the depths of the hood. “Tell me,” he began, “What will you do when you run out of us to kill? Will they make you turn your blade on yourself?”

The cloaked figure didn’t answer. Then, in a single, lightning-fast smooth movement, he drew a sword and cut the farmer down. He watched the body fall, crumpling to the ground in a spreading halo of red blood. 

A second cloaked figure dropped down to the road from the trees, red hair trailing from under her hood. “What did he say to you?”

“Nothing,” the cloaked figure said after a moment’s pause, turning his head to look at her. “Where is the other one?”

She made a hand seal and then pointed towards the house. “There. Heading out the back of the house, towards the forest.”

He nodded, flicking the blood off his blade, and started towards the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The official timeline for this story stands as such:**  
>  _-3 days_ : Juugo and Suigetsu are separated from Sasuke and Karin.  
>  _-2 days:_ Madara/Tobi finds the copies designated B2-001; an unknown male sells B2-002 to a merchant.  
>  _-1 days_ : Juugo and Suigetsu split up to search for Sasuke and Karin.  
>  _0:_ Juugo infiltrates the facility and is wounded rescuing B2-003; they are sent to Konoha by the retrieval squad. The Sasuke Retrieval squad enters the facility, liberates copy sets B2-004 through B2-054 and what are assumed to be the original Sasuke and Karin, while Madara/Tobi kills copy set B2-001. Tsunade wakes up. Suigetsu and copy set B2-002 meet up with the facility escapees. The facility is destroyed by Konoha ANBU; Madara retrieves the suspected originals and the plot of Naruto continues as normal.  
>  _15 years later_ : Sasuke B2-012 is killed by Sasuke B3-116.
> 
>  **What is the purpose of the clones?** \- It is implied that Sasuke Batch 1 was made for their eyes. Batch 2, as suggested by Ino and Kakashi, were made to be a biological weapons system - removing their memories made them easier to reprogram.
> 
>  **Who is the real villain in this?** \- Danzo, Orochimaru, Madara/Tobi are all implied to be involved, but Madara/Tobi's knowledge of the seals and tattoos suggests he's more heavily involved than he is letting on (and he's a master manipulator). Much of the equipment is noted as being from the civilian sector, suggesting that there may be another party involved.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the ride, in all its technobabbling glory.


End file.
